Armand A. Perry

Armand Perry is a partner in Smith Anderson’s Commercial Team, focusing on corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and complex commercial transactions.

Armand has extensive experience in structuring, negotiating, and closing debt finance transactions. As lender’s counsel, he has represented major commercial banks acting as lead agent or participant in the senior syndicated financing of strategic acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, and recapitalizations ranging from $250 million to in excess of $1 billion. As borrower’s counsel, he has assisted both sponsored and corporate borrowers, including start-ups and growth companies, in obtaining secured and unsecured financing critical to their capital structure and operations. Armand's leveraged finance experience encompasses intercreditor arrangements; workouts; multicurrency, investment grade, ABL, second lien, mezzanine, subordinated, and DIP financings; and multijurisdictional security for credit facilities under U.S., English, French, and German law.

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Armand is also experienced with other forms of finance, including public finance, derivatives, and securitization. Within public finance, he has acted as borrower’s counsel and bank counsel in bond financings for hospitals and other organizations in North Carolina and Georgia. His derivatives experience covers interest rate and foreign exchange options and hedging arrangements, as well as ISDA, repurchase, and prime brokerage agreements.

Armand’s corporate practice focuses on mergers, acquisitions, and divestitures, representing public and privately held companies and regulated entities. He advises on other forms of business collaboration as well, such as joint ventures and pharmaceutical collaboration, promotion, and royalty agreements. He also counsels clients on the duties of board members and officers in connection with these transactions and other governance matters.

Armand has worked with clients in a range of industries, including the automotive, aviation, banking, construction, consumer product, energy, healthcare, information technology, logistics, manufacturing, media, pharmaceutical, retail, and telecommunications industries.

Prior to joining Smith Anderson, Armand practiced corporate law for 7 years in New York and Paris with a global law firm. He was a recipient of that firm's Pro Bono Award for representation of a microfinance lender in developing countries and for assistance to a U.N. prosecutor handling war crimes trials in Kosovo.

While in law school, Armand earned a master’s degree in international relations from Johns Hopkins University in Bologna, Italy, and served as a senior editor of the Columbia Law Review. He clerked with a South Korean law firm in Seoul, Korea, and served as honors legal intern in the Office of General Counsel of the U.S. Department of Defense. Before studying law, he was employed at the Ministry of Environment of the Slovak Republic in Bratislava, Slovakia.

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Recognition

• Chambers USA: America’s Leading Business Lawyers, Banking & Finance (2022-2024)
• The Best Lawyers in America®
  • Banking and Finance Law (2014-2025)
  • Best Lawyers® 2021 Banking and Finance Law "Lawyer of the Year" in Raleigh
• Certificate in International Law, Columbia Law School
• Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar, Columbia Law School
• Senior Editor, Columbia Law Review
• White & Case Pro Bono Award

Education

• Columbia Law School, J.D., 1999
• Johns Hopkins School of Advanced International Studies (SAIS), M.A., with honors, 1999
• Princeton University, B.A., 1992
• The Westminster Schools, valedictorian, 1988

Bar & Court Admissions

• North Carolina Bar Association
• Co-Chair, Commercial Law and UCC Committee, Business Law Section 
• Smith Anderson Opinion Committee
• Carolina Triangle Princeton Club

• Represented a Nasdaq-listed bank holding company in its assumption of all customer deposits and certain other liabilities, and acquisition of substantially all loans and certain other assets, of a bridge bank, as successor to the failed bank subsidiary of a Nasdaq-listed bank holding company, from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, as receiver for the bridge bank.
• Represented a NYSE-listed energy company in a strategic alliance with an on-site power generation systems company for repowering a 30 megawatt project involving distributed generation systems at two sites.
• Represented a Nasdaq-listed bank holding company in a public offering of subordinated notes for aggregate proceeds of $350 million.
• Represented a Nasdaq-listed bank holding company in a public offering of depositary shares representing interests in preferred stock for aggregate proceeds of $345 million.
• Advised Majestic Marble and Glass Company in a definitive agreement to acquire the assets of a company specializing in counter top installations and kitchen renovations.