Change of Identity

John Vasily doesn’t need a textbook when he teaches his class on global securities offerings at Georgetown University Law Center; he can mine his own deals for case studies and tests. The Debevoise & Plimpton partner describes the biggest transaction he worked on last year, the initial public offering of American International Assurance, as “the perfect final exam, [because] every issue the class covers came up.” To wit: The parent company, which had a central role in the banking crash of September 2008, had just been bailed out by the federal government. The subsidiary that was going public was based in Hong Kong and had highly regulated operations in more than a dozen countries. And it all happened in the midst of the economic turmoil that characterized much of last year.

AIA’s IPO, which hit the market in October, raised $21.5 billion, a record amount for the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. It was one of several asset sales that American International Group, Inc., held to repay its $182 billion government bailout. “These were an amazing series of deals to do, especially because they occurred during a time of great economic turmoil and political sensitivity,” Vasily says.