William S. Veatch serves as Chair of Morrison & Foerster’s Financial Transactions Group and has extensive transactional experience in the fields of banking, leasing, vendor finance, and securitization.

His practice is focused on representing foreign and domestic banks, equipment leasing companies, and other institutional lenders in the structuring, documentation, and administration of various forms of complex debt and equity financings, including asset based and leveraged lease financings. Mr. Veatch devotes a substantial portion of his practice to advising financial institutions and company clients on the structuring of global equipment and software vendor programs, including the sale and securitization of receivables. Mr. Veatch also advises clients on cross-border and off-shore lease structures that are designed to minimize withholding taxes.

Mr. Veatch obtained a law degree in 1987 from the University of California, Hastings College of the Law, where he was a staff member of Hastings International & Comparative Law Review . He earned a LL.B. in 1985 from the University of Manitoba School of Law in Winnipeg. While there, he served as administrative editor of the Manitoba Law Journal. He received a B.A. in History from the University of Winnipeg in 1985.

Mr. Veatch has written articles and spoken extensively at programs sponsored by the Equipment Leasing Association and the American Bar Association, on issues relating to software leasing, vendor programs, securitization of receivables, monetization of intellectual property rights, the Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act (UCITA), and electronic commerce. Mr. Veatch is also the author of a chapter entitled “Venture Leasing and Software Leasing” in Equipment Leasing (Matthew Bender, 2006) and a chapter entitled “General Intangibles and Intellectual Property as Collateral” in Commercial Finance Guide (Matthew Bender, 2004).

Mr. Veatch was admitted to the California bar in 1987. He is a member of the State Bar of California, the American Bar Association, and the San Francisco Bar Association. He is also a member of the Uniform Commercial Code Committee of the State Bar of California and a former member of the Legal Committee of the Equipment Leasing Association.

Since 2004, Mr. Veatch has been listed as one of Northern California’s “Super Lawyers” by the San Francisco Magazine, and is listed in The Legal 500 US. In 2009, Mr. Veatch was selected for inclusion in The Best Lawyers in America in the specialty of Structured Finance Law.

Representative Matters

• Represented container leasing company in securitization transaction and issuance of $300 million of Floating Rate Asset-Backed Notes, and in $75 million credit facility
• Represented lessor in cross-border lease financing of technology equipment in the US, Canada, UK, France, Germany, Netherlands, and China
• Represented Tideline Capital, Inc. and Tideline Funding LLC, as originator in connection with $100 million software finance receivables securitization
• Represented originator in connection with $100 million securitization of technology trade receivables
• Represented software company in connection with its global vendor finance program including sales of receivables to Japanese banks
• Represented Maxtor Corporation as originator in connection with $100 million disk drive receivables securitization
• Represented technology company in connection with the sale of Japanese receivables to commercial paper conduits
• Represented software company in $100 million securitization of software royalties