Timothy Gaffney

Tim Gaffney is a Partner in the Firm’s Financial Institutions Practice. He focuses on mergers and acquisitions and other significant transactions and corporate governance matters. He regularly advises financial institutions, fintech companies, private equity sponsors, public companies and specialty lenders on mergers and acquisitions, buyouts, spin-offs, divestitures, recapitalizations, investments, joint ventures, other significant corporate transactions and corporate governance matters. He has guided various clients through cross-border transactions in numerous jurisdictions. In 2023, Tim was named a “Rising Star” in Banking by Law360.

Notable experience prior to joining Simpson Thacher includes representing:

• DuPont in its merger-of-equals transaction with The Dow Chemical Company
• Worldpay in its merger with FIS
• Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation in various matters, including its acquisition of American Railcar Leasing from Icahn Enterprises and subsequent sale of SMBC Rail Services to ITE; and investments in Jefferies Financial Group and Moelis & Company, among others
• Wells Fargo Bank in various matters, including in connection with its sales of its Institutional Retirement & Trust business to Principal Financial Group; student loan portfolio to a group of institutional investors; and investment trust assets to GTCR and Reverence Capital
• Citigroup in various matters, including the sales of its consumer banking and credit card businesses in Brazil, to Itaú, and in Colombia, to the Bank of Nova Scotia;; sale of various ruble-denominated assets to Uralsib as part of Citi’s wind-down of its Russian operations
• Banc of California in connection with its merger with PacWest and concurrent capital raise from Warburg and Centerview
• Blackstone in its sale of Lendmark Financial Services to Lightyear Capital and the Ontario Teachers’ Pension Plan Board
• Fortress in connection with the sale of Cetera Financial Group to Genstar Capital and the merger between Opus Bank and Pacific Premier Bancorp
• Stone Point Capital in its acquisition of Kensington Vanguard
• TPG and Calera Capital in the sale of Direct General to National General
• OceanFirst Financial Corp. in its acquisition of Sun Bancorp; and minority investment in Auxilor Capital
• First Bancorp in its acquisition of Banco Santander Puerto Rico
• Green Bancorp in its merger with Veritex Holdings
• CMS Energy in its sale of EnerBank to Regions Bank

Tim received his J.D. from the University of Michigan Law School in 2014 and his B.S. from the University of Oregon in 2011. He is admitted to practice in New York.