Johannes A. Bürgi

Johannes Bürgi, partner with Walder Wyss since 2005, advises clients on matters involving real estate, finance, structured finance, restructuring, and capital markets (including debt and equity offerings and initial public offerings). In finance, he focuses on secured and unsecured lending, structured finance transactions including securitisation, alternative risk transfer, RMBS, CMBS, covered bonds, factoring, project finance and asset finance including complex real estate financings and PPP financings.

Johannes advised on virtually all public and private auto-leasing and credit card asset-backed securitisations in Switzerland including GE Money Bank, Cembra, AMAG Leasing, Swisscard/Credit Suisse and a number of conduit transactions for Swiss auto-lease captives. Other work highlights include acting on behalf of a consortium of lenders with respect to the rescue operation of a major German Pfandbriefbank, acting on behalf of UBS AG with respect to its novel covered bond program backed by Swiss residential mortgages, acting on the first public private partnership financing transaction in Switzerland, acting on behalf of Apollo International in its trade receivables factoring and inventory based financing to fund Apollo’s acquisition of Rio Tinto's Alcan business as well as acting on a large restructuring transaction with respect to a pan-European hotel financing. Johannes also advised Lloyds Bank on the first Swiss auto lease asset-backed conduit securitisation of a US based client.

In real estate, Johannes advised Norges Bank Investment Management (NBIM) in its 1 billion Swiss franc landmark acquisition of the Uetlihof office complex in Zurich from Credit Suisse AG in a sale-leaseback transaction, Blackstone Group with respect to the Swiss part of the acquisition of assets of GE Capital Real Estate in a transaction valued at US$ 23 billion globally, a Middle-Eastern sovereign wealth fund on its acquisition of a portfolio of hotel properties in Switzerland.

Born in 1972, Johannes Bürgi was educated at Lausanne and Berne universities (state exam, 1998; Dr. iur., 2001, summa cum laude) and at Stanford Law School (LLM in corporate governance and practice, 2003). He has working experience as a District Court law clerk, trainee at a Berne law firm, research assistant at the University of Berne and secondee to UBS Investment Bank in Zurich. Johannes is ranked as a top practitioner by international directories such as Chambers, PLC and ILO that describe him being 'a great tactician'. He is winner for Switzerland of the ILO Client Choice Award for securitisation and structured finance. He is fluent in German, English and French; he is registered with the Zurich Bar Registry and admitted to practice in all Switzerland.