Demetrios Xistris

Senior Counsel

Demetrios Xistris is a Senior Counsel in O’Melveny’s New York office and a member of the Capital Markets, Derivatives and Structured Products and Investment Funds Practices. He is highly experienced in financial products and derivatives transactions including equity, credit, fixed income, commodities and hedge fund/fund of fund derivatives. He has extensive knowledge of structured products, hedge fund structures and activities, structured notes and CD programs, financing and credit enhanced vehicles, corporate, issuer related transactions, monetization and hedging transactions, prime brokerage, synthetic prime brokerage, structured repo, equity finance and proprietary trading and has worked on a number of asset acquisitions related to derivative and financial products trading businesses. Demetrios is also an authority on master agreements, netting and collateral documentation.

 

Prior to joining O’Melveny, Demetrios spent 15 years on Wall Street at various investment banks as the senior lawyer where he managed the legal, regulatory enforcement, trading, and marketing aspects of the firms' US equities and equity derivatives businesses.

 

Most recently, Demetrios was a managing director and legal head of the US Equities and Equity Derivatives division of Société Générale’s, the world’s largest (by revenue) equity derivatives house where he chaired the Global Legal Department’s Hedge Fund Working Group, was a member of its Global Equity Derivatives and ISDA Master Agreements Working Groups, and participated on the firm’s US New Products Committee for all new equity products.

 

His experience also includes working in similar capacities at BNP Paribas, where he was a managing director responsible for all legal matters relating to the firm's US Equities and Equity Derivatives business, and at JPMorgan, where he was that bank’s first equity derivatives lawyer.

 

During his work at the investment banks, Demetrios was also very active on FINRA’s Derivatives Products Committee. He was, and continues to be, a member of various ISDA committees, including the Equity Derivatives Committee. He co-chaired ISDA’s 2006 Fund Derivatives Definitions project and is a founding member of the Structured Products Association.

Illustrative Professional Experience

• Advising dealers, banks, investment funds, hedge funds, private equity funds and other end users on the regulatory, legal and economic impacts of financial reform regulation under the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2010.
• Representing major investment funds and hedge funds in their investment strategies executed through the use of derivatives including through total return swaps, credit default swaps and other OTC facility arrangements.
• Representation of various portfolio companies in connection with their negotiation, entering into and termination of their hedging strategies
• Advising on the utilization of derivatives to create synthetic internal rate of return payoffs in connection with an investment fund’s allocation of assets.
• Representation of a large portfolio company interest in the extension and modification of significant hedge transactions with Lehman Brothers Inc. and various of its affiliates through new derivative overlays with a new investment bank.
• Representation of various life settlements investor entities in connection with their exposure to longevity and mortality risk and hedging transactions in connection therewith. 
• Representation of various corporations, investment funds, hedge funds and other end-users in connection with negotiating master trading agreements including ISDA, prime brokerage, repurchase agreements and collateral arrangements in connection with their risk management goals, including in the energy, commodity, power and micro-loan finance areas.
• Representation of various corporations, investment management funds and other end-users in connection with various swap and option transactions on debt securities, equity securities (including a restrike of an embedded call option sold to convertible note purchasers in a Rule 144A transaction), interest rate swaps and commodity and FX linked transactions.
• Representation of corporate issuers and their equity hedges in connection with a convertible bond issuance.
• Representation of bank issuers in connection with their derivative linked notes, CDs and securities issuance programs.
• Representation of various significant creditors and other interested parties in connection with issues and disputes relating to existing and terminated over-the-counter derivatives with Lehman Brothers Inc., and various of its affiliates.
• Representation of a large investment management fund in connection with its negotiation of amending and/or termination of various highly structured total return swaps on debt portfolios.
• Representation of investment management fund entities in connection with their entering into a highly structured total return swap on debt portfolios through SPV entities.
• Review of all master trading agreements and structured transactions for large investment funds and hedge funds.
• Advise on the privately negotiated debt purchase agreements for a fund active in the credit markets.
• Advise a leading hedge fund in the potential acquisition of an equity interest in a derivatives product company.
• Advise a leading hedge fund on the potential acquisition of a US based managed account platform together with a non-US investment vehicle with numerous structured funds using structured products to effect certain defined returns.
• Advise on the restructuring of a debt investment portfolio transaction layering in the purchase of credit default protection on the portfolio.
• Advise a large investor in the life settlement area on the entering into an index swap on a life settlement index.
• Advise on a number of SEC and state level attorney general inquiries of dealers and banks relating to their trading and marketing of certain OTC products, including the trading of credit default swaps and the underwriting of securities related thereto.
• Advise broker dealers on a number of FINRA inquiries and investigations.
• Advise on various 10b5-1 sale plans entered into through the use of OTC derivatives.
• Advise a foreign investment fund on the close-out and termination of various swaps with an Icelandic bank.
• Advise a major US fund on a range of trading disputes with dealers.
• Advise funds and portfolio entities on the purchase of debt obligations through LSTA documentation.

Professional Activities

Moderator, “The Liquidity Crunch – Its Effect on Pricing, Valuation, Risk Management and Termination”, Structured Product Association Annual Conference (March 2009)
Panelist, “OTC Derivatives Regulation”, Structured Products Association (May 2009)
Author, “History of OTC Derivatives and Regulation”, (September 2009)
Moderator, “Capital Markets Perspective on new Life Settlements Products”, OMM and Structured Product Association Life Settlements Securitization Summit (June 2010)