Gordon F.Peery

Today Gordon works in the following capacities:

Financial Services

Gordon represents Morgan Stanley and other leading market participants in financial, commodity, real estate, and energy markets, and is a leading investment management lawyer working in several time zones. Gordon is the author of The Post-Reform Guide to Derivatives and Futures (John C. Wiley & Sons, 2012), referred to as "The Guide" in the post-2008 recession era. The winner of the 2012 International Book Award in the category of Law, Gordon’s book has been used as a textbook at Columbia Law School, the Georgetown University Law Center, and Vanderbilt Law School, where he taught as guest lecturer. 

Affordable Housing, Public and Private Finance

Gordon has served as bond counsel, issuer’s counsel, investor’s counsel, derivatives counsel, and custodian’s counsel in the issuance of securities in a wide range of debt financings (and refinancings) involving asset-backed securities and derivatives accompanying those securities. As a member of the steering committee for the Institutional Investors practice of the firm, Gordon currently represents a large institutional investor in affordable and mixed-income housing finance and ongoing compliance matters. During the pandemic, Gordon was retained by an affiliate of the US Department of the Treasury to conduct a site visit of an applicant for federal financing. Gordon is increasingly involved in the representation of projects with impact investors seeking community development financial institution (CDFI) financing with investment vehicles benefitting the disadvantaged. Gordon worked as an associate with a leading public finance and securities firm.

New Technology

Gordon leads the Financial Products & Technologies and Blockchain practices and his work underscores the need for new financial technology to help retail, real estate, derivatives, and other markets to properly function during stresses to the markets, pandemics, and other global crises. Gordon has delivered presentations to, and he currently works for leading financial services and real estate investment firms and provides to many of them Blockchain- and Distributed Ledger Technology-related regulatory guidance and counsel with respect to the proper classification of applications as insurance, securities, or commodities (e.g., derivatives, Swaps). Gordon previously worked in a leading law firm with a team representing Lloyds of London and other insurance companies and today, with Willis Towers Watson, counsels a leading investment advisory firm in the development of an insurance and derivatives product which will be the first of its kind in the real estate industry.

National Security, CFIUS, AML, Beneficial Ownership and OFAC

Gordon has a vibrant regulatory practice and regularly advises clients with respect to statutory law and regulations promulgated by the US Department of the Treasury and guidance and regulations issued by other federal departments, agencies, and offices. He submitted comment letters since the recession of 2008, obtained regulatory relief, defended multinational corporations in litigation and enforcement proceedings, and on October 27, 2019, presented comments to national security (CFIUS) rules proposed by the US Department of the Treasury. Gordon leads the CFIUS practice at the firm and has worked closely with a presidential appointee and lead rulemaker and his staff at CFIUS, the US Department of the Treasury, and its Office of Investment Security, and was instrumental in organizing and leading a February 27, 2020 event in the New York office of Seyfarth (where former Assistant Treasury Secretary Thomas P. Feddo and leading private sector CFIUS practitioners discussed final CFIUS rules). Gordon currently represents international and domestic clients in regulatory compliance work while interfacing with CFIUS if and as required by the law and has successfully obtained numerous safe harbor letters from CFIUS to enable non-US clients to do business in the United States within existing statutory law and regulation. Gordon previously worked as a senior associate with a leading K Street lobby firm in high-profile derivatives, real estate, energy, tax, and finance transactions which were the subject of Congressional hearings and legislative initiatives.

Gordon represents a leading Japanese bank, has lived overseas, and speaks Japanese. Before its combination with Dal-Ichi Kangyo and with the Industrial Bank of Japan to form Mizuho Financial Group, Gordon worked as an instructor of beginning and intermediate Japanese to American bankers of The Fuji Bank, Ltd. Gordon has lectured and practiced throughout the US and Canada, and has counseled clients and taught in London, Frankfurt, Singapore, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Japan, Australia, and Brunei. He brought to Seyfarth experience from leading investment management and structured finance firms in North America. Gordon is experienced in facilitating the execution of investment strategies in compliance with the Investment Company Act of 1940 (1940 Act), the Investment Advisers Act of 1940, and ERISA.

Derivatives

Gordon began his work as a structured finance associate in 2004 at a leading global finance and real estate practice headquartered in Philadelphia, where he acquired traditional real estate and capital markets experience, including drafting and negotiating whole loans, complex senior-subordinate structures, repo and warehouse credit facilities, and derivatives in asset-backed, commercial and residential mortgage-backed security transactions. Gordon continues his work at Seyfarth as an active contributor to the Structured & Real Estate Finance practice and its clients by negotiating LIBOR replacement language in existing structures and by teaching both internal and external courses on derivatives and structured finance reform after having worked with a team at Seyfarth representing a leading trustee and custodian in transactions involving collateralized loan obligations, floating rate notes, and other complex structures. Today, as the chairman of the Derivatives practice at Seyfarth, Gordon is a leading authority worldwide in the law and regulation of over-the-counter and exchange-traded derivatives.

Real Estate

Gordon is a partner in the Real Estate practice of the firm. Gordon has a vibrant fund practice where he represents a range of investment vehicles, private equity clients, company pensions, state retirement systems, sovereign wealth funds, and asset managers. These clients hired Gordon to execute primarily derivatives- and real estate-based investment strategies involving complex structures, including, for example, the synthetic replication via derivatives of property ownership and leases. Gordon hails from a line of real estate property and banking ancestors and continues that line while working in the real estate investment space.