After working as a summer associate at S&C, Craig Coben joined the New York office in 1993 as an associate in the General Practice Group, and later moved to the London office.
Now the global head of Equity Capital Markets at Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Coben shared with us how his experience at S&C helped to shape his career.
“My experience in S&C’s Latin America practice was transformative. I worked on deals in Mexico, Chile, Argentina, Venezuela and Brazil. Back in the early and mid-’90s these ‘emerging markets’ were more like ‘frontier markets,’ at least insofar as familiarity with U.S. law or even international practice is concerned.
“My most vivid memory involved our work in 1994 on the first sovereign bond out of Brazil since it had entered into a financial crisis in the late 1970s. Every day the details changed: the terms and conditions, the bookrunning banks, the form of agreement, the jurisdiction of distribution and even the currency. I had to learn so much at once as the deal kept evolving. I even managed to pick up Portuguese along the way.
“I continue to draw upon the lessons I learned on the LatAm deals, the experiences I had at S&C and the relationships I forged.”