ELLEN P. PESCH is a partner in the Insurance and Financial Services Group at Sidley Austin, LLP, and is co-head of the OTC Derivatives Cross-Practice Area Team at the firm. Ms. Pesch concentrates in the representation of capital market participants with respect to structuring, negotiating and documenting derivatives and structured financial products. She represents participants in a wide variety of transactions, including interest rate swap and cap agreements, swaptions, total return swaps, credit default swaps, weather, catastrophic, mortality and longevity related swaps, traditional and synthetic guaranteed investment contracts, securities lending, repurchase and reverse-repurchase transactions, forward purchase/sale transactions and other derivative instruments. Ms. Pesch has significant experience working on alternative risk transfer transactions involving catastrophic, mortality and longevity risk, as well as restructuring and working-out stressed structured finance transactions involving derivatives. Ms. Pesch also has significant experience with the changing regulatory environment as it relates to OTC derivatives and the intersection of insurance products and derivative products.
Ms. Pesch has been recognized by clients and fellow lawyers as a “Leading Lawyer” nationally in the field of capital markets: structured products by Chambers USA-America’s Leading Business Lawyers (2010-2012) and Chambers Global (2011-2012) and recommended for structured finance in The Legal 500 U.S. (2011-2012). She has also been appointed as an Advisor on Securities Law to the American Law Institute-American Bar Association Program Committee.
Recent Speaking Engagements
- ISDA Litigation Symposium, Litigation in the OTC Derivatives Market (San Francisco, April 2010)
- ALI ABA Webinar, Derivatives Legislation, Dodd-Frank Act and the New Regulatory Regime for Derivatives (July 2010)
- Casualty Actuarial Society 2010 in Focus: Government in Insurance Seminar, Credit Default Swaps – Insurance or not? (Boston, October 2010)
- CFTC, International Symposium and Training Program, OTC Regulatory Reform Issues (Chicago, October 2010)
- World Legal Forum, Expert’s Roundtable, Towards an International Dispute Resolution Facility for the Financial Markets (The Hague, October 2010)
- ISDA, Understanding Collateral Arrangements, ISDA Credit Support Annex (New York, January 2011)
- ACI, Reform and Regulation of Derivatives Transactions, Recent litigation involving OTC Derivatives (New York, January 2011)
- SIFMA, Insurance & Risk-Linked Securities Conference, Legal & Regulatory Developments (New York, March 2011)
- ISDA, Annual General Meeting, Documentation & Legal Panel (Prague, CZ, April 2011)
- ISDA, Impact of U.S. Regulations for Clients & Key Issues for Customer Clearing Conference, The U.S. Regulatory Landscape (Boston, May 2011)
- ISDA, Understanding ISDA Master Agreements, Overview of U.S. Regulatory Reform (New York, September 2011)
- ISDA, Evolution of the OTC Derivatives Market: Regulatory Developments in Canada, Europe, and the U.S., Regulation of the U.S. and European markets and its impact on Canadian entities (Toronto, September 2011)
- KPMG, Global Financial Reporting and Valuation Conference, Valuation Trends for Alternative Assets (Orlando, December 2011)
- ALI-ABA, SEC/CFTC Rulemaking: Overhauling the Derivatives Trading Infrastructure (Webinar, January 2012)
- ISDA, Understanding ISDA Master Agreements, 2002 ISDA Master Agreement (New York, February 2012)
- LSTA, Unintended Consequences: What Dodd-Frank means for Syndicated Loans (Los Angeles and Chicago, May 2012)
- ALI-ABA Webinar, Title VII and Product Definitions (August 2012)
- ISDA, Uncleared Transactions-Swap Documentation Post Dodd-Frank (New York, November 2012)