News
Commercial Finance Practice Group Co-Chairs Jeff Dunlop and Marie McGuire are featured in the June 2024 issue of The Secured Lender, which also includes profiles of SFNet's 2024 40 Under 40 Award recipients. Jeff received the award in 2020 and Prisca Kim is honored with it this year.
In January 2024, Jeff and Maria took the helm of Goldberg Kohn's Commercial Finance Practice Group, succeeding Michael Hainen, who held the position for nine years. In the article, they discuss their career trajectories and current roles; the most pressing legal challenges for secured finance professionals this year; as well as collaboration between legal teams, clients and financial institutions.
In terms of legal challenges, Jeff says: "We’re coming off a period of very high loan transaction activity. The last couple of years have been extremely busy for commercial finance and other secured lending professionals. It’s been a busy period driven by low interest rates, strong valuations and other good performance indicators in the market. Will that continue? What will 2024 look like? We’ve been predicting some type of pickup or uptick in restructurings and challenges that hasn’t quite hit yet. Will this be the year where that happens?
"I think the challenges for 2024 will be to manage some of the cycle we’ve experienced for the last couple of years being very strong and will that continue," he concludes
When discussing their new roles, Maria says: "This is the first time that our group has had co-chairs. It’s also the first time that a woman has been the chair of the finance practice. I think one thing that really makes our group interesting is that all of the principals were, at some point, associates in our group. We don’t have any lateral partners. We haven’t acquired other firms or merged with other firms, so we have worked with each other for a long time. We know and trust each other and care deeply about the firm and its success. We know who to go to with different projects or topics that come up in our matters - what each other’s experience is and where the relationships are. I look forward to continuing to grow our group and our practice while maintaining our close-knit culture.
"Mike Hainen was the chair before us, and he really did an excellent job of growing the practice. We have big shoes to fill," she concludes.
CLICK HERE to read the full article in The Secured Lender.
