Deborah A. Hays

Debbie serves as Chair of the firm’s Business Counseling Group and has more than 30 years of experience representing companies and financial institutions in complex business transactions, including business financing, securities offerings and compliance, director advisory services, mergers and acquisitions, and technology transfer and licensing. Debbie’s clients range from small, local businesses to large international corporations (both privately-held and public), as well as start-up and development stage enterprises. Debbie has served as Chair of Archer’s Board of Director’s since October 2019.

Debbie provides her business clients with general representation in areas such as entity formation, risk management/mitigation, corporate governance, and corporate reorganizations and dissolution. With a strong financing background, Debbie’s experience encompasses a broad array of transactions, both debt and equity, including public offerings, private placements, institutional lending (on behalf of both lenders and borrowers), venture capital, asset securitizations, and sale/leaseback transactions. These financings have included numerous transactions with a size of $100 million or more.

In the area of mergers and acquisitions, Debbie regularly represents companies, owners, buyers, sellers and executives in transactions such as asset purchases, stock purchases, joint ventures and strategic alliances. Her experience includes transactions involving public companies, private equity firms, financially distressed sellers, intellectual property assets, Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust compliance, assets located outside of the United States, and complex licensing and regulatory issues. She has particular expertise with M&A transactions in the home health care, automobile dealership, vehicle fleet management, and consumer products industries.

Debbie assists clients across diverse industries with contract preparation, review and negotiation. The types of contracts include procurement, vendor, professional services, supply, licensing and distribution agreements, as well as trade secret, confidentiality, non-solicitation and non-disclosure agreements intended to protect proprietary business information and relationships. Debbie is also a member of Archer’s COVID-19 Task Force and represents clients in various industries with respect to government disaster loan programs, including the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans.

A significant portion of Debbie’s practice is dedicated to the securities law and director counseling/advisory services areas. She represents issuers in initial and secondary public offerings, and represents issuers and investors in numerous private placements of securities. She has counseled public companies, boards of directors of public companies, and individual directors and officers of public companies on myriad issues involving compliance with the requirements of various federal and state securities laws.