Ryan T. Purpura of Reed Smith. Courtesy photo.

Ryan T. Purpura, Reed Smith

The deals market has been feast or famine in recent years, how do you navigate the ups and downs of an unpredictable marketplace?

In this business, you need to be nimble and flexible as the market evolves. Deals are not always going to happen exactly the way you are used to, so be ready to learn new skills to meet novel client needs.

For example, pre-pandemic and before the collapse of commodities prices, we saw a good stretch of working on typically structured M&A deals involving normal, non-distressed energy assets. But new realities call for creative solutions, so we successfully pivoted to working on innovative restructuring deals, which then, in turn, flowed organically into working more with distress assets and debt.