Joseph (Yossi) Vebman

Throughout a career spanning more than two decades, Mr. Vebman has worked on some of the largest, most innovative and high-profile transactions involving equity-linked and other derivative financial products. Mr. Vebman’s experience includes representing Fortune 100 corporations, including Pfizer, Gilead and General Motors; major investment banks, including Barclays, Citi, Credit Agricole, Credit Suisse, Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, Jefferies, Morgan Stanley, Nomura, Société Générale and RBC; major funds and other asset managers, including Blackrock and Fortress; and numerous other clients in various derivatives and derivatives-related matters.

Mr. Vebman’s derivatives and financial products practice includes monetization, hedging, margin loans and other equity derivative transactions; interest rate and currency hedging transactions, including deal-contingent forward transactions; commodity hedging; repurchase and reverse repurchase transactions; and share lending transactions, among others. Mr. Vebman also has substantial experience with traditional corporate financing transactions, including public and private equity and debt offerings. His experience also includes advising on securitization of various financial assets, such as issuances of collateralized debt and bond obligations and mortgage-backed securities, and securitizations of credit card receivables.

Under his leadership, the Skadden Derivatives Group repeatedly has been ranked as a market leader in representing both corporate clients and other end users as well as financial institutions. Skadden frequently has been ranked as the top law firm (by value or number of deals) in representing issuers in connection with equity-linked securities, such as convertible bonds and associated hedging transactions, such as call spread and capped call transactions, substantially all of which Mr. Vebman has been personally involved in. His representations include:

• the largest-ever liquid yield option notes offering;
• several of the largest convertible bond offerings and related call spread transactions, including EMC’s $3.45 billion convertible senior notes and related derivatives, Gilead Sciences, Inc.’s $2.2 billion convertible senior notes and related derivatives, and Becton Dickinson’s $2.25 billion mandatorily convertible preferred stock;
• several of the largest structured margin loan facilities secured by publicly traded securities;
• the first callable perpetual dual-currency notes;
• the first margin loan by a registered investment company;
• the first convertible preferred equity units, which received the International Financing Review’s (IFR) Americas Structured Equity Issuer Deal of the Year award;
• the first contingent convertible units, which also received IFR’s Americas Structured Equity Issue Deal of the Year Award;
• over 100 convertible and exchangeable note offering transactions, many of which involved associated derivatives;
• numerous accelerated share repurchase programs, in an aggregate amount of tens of billions of U.S. dollars, many of which introduced unique and novel features;
• the first variable prepaid forward transaction structured as an initial public offering;
• total return swaps on a debt portfolio of approximately $10 billion; and
• several dealers in novel repurchase transactions with a sovereign.

Mr. Vebman also is a member of Skadden’s Capital Markets Group, leading the firm’s Israeli practice. Born and raised in Israel, he has significant experience with Israeli matters, including public offerings, mergers and acquisitions, financing, regulatory and general corporate matters, among others. His high-profile representations include advising the underwriters in the largest-ever Israeli IPO in the U.S. by Mobileye. He also counseled, among others, the Israeli Securities Authority and the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange on various matters.

Mr. Vebman has been recognized as a leading practitioner in a number of areas. According to leading industry publications, clients have noted that he “brings the best in-depth knowledge of current regulation interpretation along with extensive knowledge of previously executed transactions going back decades,” “has mastered the art of making complicated things look digestible for the client so they can understand the full picture,” and “is extremely knowledgeable yet pragmatic in his approach ... the work product is always excellent.”

He repeatedly has been selected for inclusion in Chambers Global: The World’s Leading Lawyers for Business, Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, The Legal 500 U.S. and IFLR1000.