John M. Clapp

Founding Partner

John is a co-founder and partner of Clapp Kelner PLLC. He is a seasoned corporate and securities attorney with almost 30 years of broad-ranging experience in cross-border transactional matters. He has an extensive track record leading international mergers and acquisitions, restructurings, debt and equity capital markets transactions and securities compliance matters. He has successfully closed dozens of complex acquisitions, dispositions, financings and restructurings in the US, Europe and Latin America, and is a trusted advisor to boards and committees in troubled situations. He also has extensive expertise representing issuers from emerging markets on US securities matters. His experience spans the financial services, telecommunications, energy, aviation and heavy industry sectors.

A British native, John started his career at Linklaters in London and then emigrated to New York, where he was an associate for more than seven years with Davis Polk & Wardwell. During the 1990s, as a partner at Squire, Sanders, John practiced for more than four years in Central and Eastern Europe, where he built and led the firm’s highly successful finance practice. He represented financial institutions, issuers, and borrowers throughout the region on numerous pioneering transactions, including high-profile privatizations and other acquisitions, public securities offerings and complex finance transactions, raising aggregate funds in excess of $3 billion. After he relocated back to New York, John was recruited to increasingly senior positions leading the international practices of major law firms.

John is listed in The Legal 500 for Mergers, Acquisitions and Buyouts, 2010 and 2011 Editions.

Significant transactions include:

- US corporate and securities counsel to Tricom, S.A., a major telecommunications provider in the Dominican Republic, on special committee investigation, restatement, deregistration and US bankruptcy proceedings

- Team leader representing corporate trust counterparties to Lehman Brothers in resolving multiple structured finance transactions

- Enron Corp. Unsecured Creditors’ Committee in investigation and resolution of structured transactions and related asset dispositions

- Finsa, a Mexican real estate developer, in disposition of $450 million industrial property portfolio

- €2.5 billion acquisition of cable and telecommunications assets in Belgium, including negotiation of €550 million interim working capital facility

- Boeing on strategic investment in a Czech military jet manufacturer, part of a $500 million recapitalization

- Amtel-Vredestein N.V., a Russian tire manufacturer, on initial public offering of GDRs on the London Stock Exchange

- Eurotel Bratislava, a.s., a mobile telecommunications operator in the Slovak Republic, on €175 million US registered high yield bond offering

- Delta, Federal Express and Mesa in multi-billion dollar equipment finance programs involving more than 100 aircraft