Scott C. Smith

Scott is a partner in the Corporate Group at Hanson Bridgett. Scott’s practice focuses on institutional investors and private equity matters, mergers and acquisitions, impact investing, secured and unsecured lending, and tax.

Scott has extensive experience representing large institutional investors in a variety of different matters. Scott has successfully closed hundreds of investment transactions ranging in size from ten million dollars to well in excess of a billion. Scott has experience with virtually every fund type and asset class found on the market, including private equity, venture, hedge, real estate, energy and infrastructure, debt funds and impact funds. He has represented numerous institutional investors in connection with direct and co-investments, secondary transactions, separate accounts, custody and securities lending agreements, real estate transactions and a variety of ancillary agreements related to investment activities. Scott’s clients in this area include public and private retirement systems of all sizes, universities and endowments, family offices, high net-worth individuals and corporate/strategic investors.

While focused on investor-side representation, Scott has also sat on the other side of the table and represented a number of private investment funds. Scott’s focus in this area has been in the impact space and he has worked with many of the leading impact funds in the U.S., including Investors’ Circle, TBL Capital, the Patient Capital Collaborative, Good Capital, Better Ventures and Mindful Capital. For these clients and others Scott handles fund formation, governance, investment transactions, mergers, acquisitions and other exits, and fund restructurings. Scott has also represented private funds in the investment and lending areas, handling numerous debt and equity transactions to a successful completion.

Scott’s tax background enables him to advise investors and business in connection with a variety of different deal structure and related tax issues. His practice often involves the preparation and negotiation of complex limited partnership and limited liability company agreements. He has extensive experience with partnership tax rules and the drafting of complex allocation and distribution provisions in a variety of different contexts. His clients in this area include some of the same institutional investors referenced above, and large real estate owners and developers as well.

Finally, for many of Scott’s clients he serves as outside general counsel representing them in connection with a broad array of equity financings, loan transactions, day-to-day corporate and general contract matters as well as M&A transactions.