Robert Lewis

BOB LEWIS is a partner in the firm’s Chicago Global Finance practice and is the former head of the Chicago Global Finance practice. Bob focuses his practice on representing clients in the global financial services industry. This work includes advising a cross-section of businesses, from commercial banks and investment banks to investment funds and multinational corporations. A member of the Global Finance and Capital Markets teams, Bob assists with structuring, negotiating and administering syndicated financings, structured finance transactions, corporate restructurings and workouts, in a variety of industries and sectors. He has addressed a wide range of legal issues in his practice, including those pertaining to commercial, bankruptcy and tax and corporate, trust and securities laws. 

Strong leadership in advising clients has earned Bob acknowledgement in a number of industry publications. This includes having been recognized by The Legal 500 US 2013–2017 in the area of Finance: Bank Lending (including other sources of financing). Sources told that publication: “The ‘direct and to the point’ Robert Lewis is also commended for his ‘very sound legal advice.’” Bob has been recognized by Chambers USA in the area of Banking and Finance (2016–2025). Bob was inducted into the American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers in 2024. He was also acknowledged for his finance work in The American Lawyer’s 2014 Global Legal Awards. Bob was part of a team of Sidley lawyers that took first prize in the Global M&A Deal of the Year, Japan (Outbound) category for Sidley’s representation of Beam Inc. in the $16 billion acquisition of Beam by Suntory Holdings Limited of Japan. He was also recognized in the 2015 and 2016 editions of Who’s Who Legal: Banking.

Bob has also participated in the negotiation and structuring of cross-border financing and other international corporate transactions for more than 15 years, involving institutions in the United States, Canada, China, Europe, South America, Australia and Japan. His broad leveraged finance and structured finance background has enabled him to assist clients in a variety of complex financing structures, including sustainability-linked and green loans and other financings, leveraged-ESOPs, DIP financings, leveraged recapitalizations, spinoffs, LBOs and MBOs, and an array of diverse asset types, among them corporate service contracts, motor vehicle leases, and structured settlement and lottery cash flows and payment streams.

Bob’s work has spanned a wide range of business arenas, including consumer goods, energy production and distribution, financial services, healthcare, hospitality, mutual funds, oil and gas, pharmaceuticals, publishing, real estate and REITs, technology and telecommunications.

Examples of Bob’s significant experience include:

• Representation of telecommunications company in the US$4.4 billion sale of mobile network operator company wireless operations and select spectrum assets to telecommunications company, including a combination of cash and up to approximately US$2 billion of assumed debt.
• Representation of the administrative agent in a $1.75 billion senior unsecured multicurrency credit facility, consisting of a $1 billion multicurrency revolving credit facility and a $750 million term loan facility, in favor of a hospitality REIT in connection with the borrower’s spinoff from its public parent REIT.
• Representation of the administrative agents in connection with concurrent $550 million senior, unsecured revolving credit facilities and $850 million senior, unsecured revolving credit facilities in the power and utilities space, the first U.S. syndicated credit facilities with sustainability-linked pricing incentives.
• Representation of administrative agent in a $175 million sustainability-linked syndicated credit facility, the first ESG-linked credit facility to a U.S. asset manager.
• Representation of the administrative agent in a $450 million senior secured credit facility, consisting of a $100 million revolving credit facility and a $350 million term loan facility, in favor of a newly formed REIT created in a spinoff contemporaneously with the merger of two existing public REITs. 
• Representation of agents and arrangers in connection with $2.9 billion senior secured multicurrency and $700 million unsecured bridge acquisition facilities for a pharmaceuticals company.
• Representation of an investor syndicate in connection with a multi-billion dollar, intellectual property-based, whole-business securitization of an information services company.
• Representation of a commercial bank in connection with the development of a new senior secured lending platform to domestic and off-shore investment funds and other borrowers, secured by RMBS, CMBS and other similar structured real estate assets.
• Representation of the borrower, a healthcare provider portfolio company of large sponsor, in connection with a $845 million first-lien senior secured acquisition financing and a $175 million second-lien secured acquisition financing.
• Representation of the agents in connection with $102.7 million aggregate face amount of direct-pay letters of credit issued to support certain variable rate refunding revenue bonds; the borrower’s reimbursement obligations were supported by first-mortgage bonds. 
• Representation of agents and arrangers in connection with $1.2 billion, $431 million and $279 million senior credit facilities for related energy companies. 
• Representation of the administrative agent in connection with a $1 billion senior secured revolving credit facility to refinance the secured exit credit facilities of a REIT. 

• Fellow, American College of Commercial Finance Lawyers
• Member, Chicago Bar Association and the American Bar Association
• Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management, Executive Leadership Program Certification, 2025
• In August 2013, Bob was a member of a relay team that swam 42 miles across Lake Michigan (from Chicago to Michigan) to raise money for early-stage cancer research.