Matthew A. Aiken

Matt is a Shareholder in the Firm's Corporate Section and co-chairs the Firm’s Private Markets practice.

Matt's practice includes a focus on both domestic and international investment funds, joint ventures, separate accounts, equity and debt financings, mergers and acquisitions, and large-scale real estate financings, acquisitions, and dispositions. His experience includes serving as lead counsel for over 200 public and private offerings of debt and equity securities, as well as numerous acquisitions, joint ventures, resyndications, restructurings, and other investment-related activities. He regularly advises companies on corporate governance and securities regulatory issues. Matt has also served as lead counsel on over $10 billion in real estate-related transactions, including joint ventures, fund formations, new developments, acquisitions, dispositions, mergers and recapitalizations.

A significant part of Matt’s practice includes advising investment managers and institutional investors in connection with impact investing and natural capital transactions, including forming private investment funds, joint ventures and separate account arrangements to own domestic and foreign timberlands, as well as transactions involving carbon offsets, conservation easements, mitigation banks and biofuels. Matt was lead counsel for the first open-end fund formed in the timberland investment space.

• Lead counsel on over $10 billion in real estate-related transactions, including joint ventures, fund formations, acquisitions, dispositions, mergers and recapitalizations
• Lead counsel on over 200 public and private offerings of debt and equity securities
• Lead counsel on over 100 transactions involving alternative equity financing, including tax credits and EB-5
• Lead counsel on over 50 private equity fund formations, including both domestic and international funds and multijurisdictional master-feeder structures, as well as closed-end and open-end investment vehicles
• Lead counsel on formation of $1 billion open-end domestic fund and multiple international transactions for Timber Investment Management Organization
• Lead counsel on the sale of three tax credit portfolios with a total transaction value of over $300 million, as well as formation and $100 million capitalization of tax credit syndicator
• Lead counsel to real estate company in establishing EB-5 investment platform, including the formation of nearly 20 regional centers, the creation of equity and mezzanine investment structures, negotiations with multiple regulators, negotiations with foreign finders, documentation of multiple Reg D and Reg S offerings, and the completion of numerous individual asset and portfolio investments
• Lead counsel to a publicly-traded energy company in $575 million senior note offering
• Lead counsel to publicly traded healthcare company in $1 billion stock offering
• Lead counsel on one of the largest and most complicated 1934 Act filings in history (covering four annual periods and requiring one million man-hours to complete)

Recognition

• Named to the Best Lawyers in America for Corporate Law, Real Estate Law, and Health Care Law
• Named one of the Birmingham Business Journal’s “Top 40 Under 40” (2004)
• Named one of Birmingham Magazine’s “Top Attorneys in Birmingham” (2013)

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