Alexander P. Fraser

Alec works with banks and financial institutions on complex financial products and transactions, with a particular focus on derivatives and customer hedging programs. He advises financial institutions on interest rate, foreign exchange, and commodity derivatives, including Dodd-Frank compliance, trading documentation, credit policies, and individual transactions. He also leads a national derivatives documentation practice serving banks and their customers across the United States.

Alec starts with the client’s business objective and focuses the legal work on achieving it efficiently and practically. His role often extends beyond a particular transaction or document. He helps clients develop hedging programs, documentation frameworks, policies, and processes that can be used across their organizations and scaled as their businesses grow.

Alec’s broader finance practice includes commercial lending and corporate finance. He represents financial institutions and borrowers in secured and unsecured credit transactions, syndicated and participated credits, leveraged acquisition financings, workouts and restructurings, correspondent banking arrangements, equipment finance, and municipal finance transactions. That broader practice allows him to address derivatives in the context of the credit relationship rather than treating them as a stand-alone product.

Alec serves as Managing Partner of Michael Best’s Milwaukee office, chairs the firm’s Banking & Financial Services Industry Group, and serves on the firm’s Management Committee.

Solutions in action

Building and expanding bank hedging programs

• Assisted community and regional banks in establishing customer hedging programs, including program structure, Dodd-Frank compliance, trading documentation, and credit policies.
• Assisted a regional bank in establishing a commodities hedging program, including preparation of trading documentation and credit policies and support for regulatory submissions.

Derivatives documentation at scale

• Leads a national team that prepares and negotiates more than 3,000 derivatives document sets annually for bank clients and their customers, covering transactions and counterparties of varying sizes and complexity.
• Develops documentation frameworks and processes that allow banks to handle derivatives transactions efficiently and consistently across their commercial customer base.

Commercial lending and finance

• Represents financial institutions and borrowers in secured and unsecured credit facilities, syndicated and participated credits, leveraged acquisition financings, workouts and restructurings, correspondent banking arrangements, equipment finance, and municipal finance transactions.
• Represents the private banking group of a large national bank in customized lending transactions with high-net-worth clients throughout the United States.
• Represents the municipal finance group of a national bank in direct-purchase and letter-of-credit-backed municipal bond transactions.

High-volume documentation and process design

• Leads Michael Best’s High Volume Documentation team, which helps clients manage large-scale documentation projects through standardized processes and technology-enabled workflows.
• Led a documentation project involving more than 14,000 loan documents, completed on a flat-fee-per-document basis.