Matthew Gibbons, 38

While other kids were off at summer camp, Matthew Gibbons accompanied his landlord-tenant lawyer father to his job.

“I spent a lot of my time in my dad’s office and following him in court, so a lot of the people I knew were court personnel, court officers, clerks, judges and other lawyers,” said Gibbons. “That was my universe at the time, so that stuck.”

Gibbons graduated with honors from Lafayette College with degrees in mathematics and government and law in 2009, and from New York University School of Law in 2012. He joined Gibson Dunn that year intending to litigate, but found himself more intrigued by the collaborative nature of transactional work.

“In litigation, your job is to really stick it to the other side. That’s just not consistent with my personality,” said Gibbons. “I appreciated that in transactional practice, even when things get heated, the parties want to transact. At the end of the day, you have to find common ground or the deal won’t get done.”

Gibbons advises major financial institutions, private equity sponsors and institutional lenders on complex real estate finance transactions across all asset classes and throughout the capital stack.

Some of his recent projects have included a $200 million loan-on-loan facility secured by pari-passu notes with an aggregate face value of $250 million, representing a portion of an underlying $407.6 million mortgage loan. Gibbons also advised on an approximately $418 million construction loan for a luxury hotel and branded condominium development in Colorado that included approximately $162 million in subordinate EB-5 financing.   

Other significant projects for Gibbons have included a nearly $580 million construction loan for a data center development in Virginia, and a $700 million refinancing involving both mortgage and mezzanine components with a syndicate of senior lenders.

For Gibbons, the more complex the challenge, the more inspiring the project.

“The most rewarding experiences tend to be those where you’re dealing with difficult counterparties,” said Gibbons. “Helping your client see through all of it to get to that closing is very rewarding.”