"A pleasure to work with and does excellent work."
Chambers USA 2010
Jon Van Gorp is leader of our Chicago office’s Banking & Finance practice and co-leader of the firm’s Structured Finance and Capital Markets practices. Jon's experience includes public and private securities offerings, assets sales, structured finance transactions, leveraged leases, derivatives, synthetic risk transfer programs and financial insurance. He is highly skilled at finding ways to fund difficult-to-finance assets, such as nonperforming mortgage loans, distressed ABS and MBS, mortgage servicing rights and servicing advances, and he assists clients that wish to fund their operations, sell or acquire asset portfolios and businesses, or manage and hedge their exposures by buying and selling risk.
Jon is known as an innovator. He has been part of the legal team that completed many first-of-their-kind transactions, including the first auto leveraged lease transaction funded with asset-backed debt, the first synthetic transfer of risk related to a portfolio of consumer auto leases, the first issuance of bank debt guaranteed by Farmer Mac, the first auto receivables shelf registration statement to go effective under regulation AB, the first publicly offered CDO of mezzanine MBS debt and the first securitization of Mexican mortgage loans funded in the US capital markets. Jon's reputation for innovation was recognized by the Financial Times, which ranked a risk protection arrangement that he helped design as the second most innovative M&A transaction of 2010.
For several years Jon has been ranked as an outstanding lawyer by Chambers USA, Chambers Global, Legal 500 and IFLR 1000.
- "Very thoughtful, creative and knowledgeable," he is "able to separate what can kill you from what will kill you in this space," according to Chambers Global 2013.
- According to Lexology’s 2013 Client Choice Awards, Jon "knows his subject inside-out," "communicates efficiently and effectively" and "always adds value by offering new insight or comfort on difficult issues."
- According to Chambers USA 2012, Jon is “very thoughtful, creative and knowledgeable."
- Legal 500 2010 called him "an excellent Structured Finance lawyer, outstanding on all of the elements."
- And IFLR 1000 2008 noted that Jon's work receives "substantial praise from clients and competitors."
In 2008, Jon was named on Crain's Chicago Business "40 Under 40," a prestigious honor where he was applauded for his ability to "operate like an executive, moving beyond legal questions and offering strategic and tactical insight rare for a lawyer of his vintage." This is one of the most prestigious awards that a young professional can receive, and Jon now joins other "40 Under 40" alumni including President Barack Obama.
Jon is a frequently requested speaker on finance issues and he has published articles on a wide range of structured finance-related topics. In 2008, Jon edited and co-authored Credit Market & Subprime Distress: Responding To Legal Issues, a best-selling legal treatise on the credit crisis published by the Practicing Law Institute. Reviews of this book have praised it for providing "a clear analysis of the relevant issues without getting bogged down in the minutiae of the procedures."
He is also frequently sought by top-tier media such as the Associated Press, Bloomberg News, Dow Jones Newswires, Financial Times, The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal to provide insight and analysis of issues related to the finance and banking industries.
Jon is an adjunct professor at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago, and is also active in the Chicago community as a Leadership Greater Chicago fellow.