Automotive

Greenberg Traurig’s Automotive Group provides legal counsel to car dealers, investors, buyers, and sellers nationwide. We provide a multifaceted approach, advising on financing; real estate purchasing and land development; vendor relationships; tax structuring and planning; employment law; regulatory compliance; trust and estate planning; employee compensation and ERISA matters; and the structuring, negotiation, and management of dealership acquisitions and sales. Our significant relationships with accounting resources, operational partners, and traditional and nontraditional lenders and finance sources in the industry provide our clients with inclusive legal services for the evolving retail automotive industry.

Automotive Franchises

Our attorneys are also experienced in representing automobile manufacturers and distributors in their relationships with car dealers. Our team provides guidance on and has resolved disputes throughout the country involving all aspects of the dealer network, including establishments, terminations, relocations, transfers, rights of first refusal, dealer fraud, dealer agreement modifications, product introductions and withdrawals, allocation, and incentive programs. We routinely defend both federal and state dealer act-based claims and common law claims such as business torts, breach of contract, bad faith, and RICO. Drawing on Greenberg Traurig's vast capabilities and resources in the real estate, bankruptcy, and other sectors we are able to meet our clients’ needs across the board.

Automotive Finance

Greenberg Traurig’s multidisciplinary Automotive Finance Group provides transactional, regulatory, and litigation legal counsel to auto finance companies, financial institutions, investors, car dealerships, and other stakeholders across the automotive sector.

Our automotive finance practitioners collectively have decades of experience representing financial institutions, the financing arms of major U.S. and foreign auto makers, and car dealership networks in some of the largest capital raising transactions in the industry. As part of our diverse auto finance practice, our team members:

• Structure, negotiate, and provide ongoing support for national bank and captive finance company lease and retail installment sale programs;
• Represent issuers and underwriters in connection with public and private placements of ABS securities backed by auto loans and auto leases;
• Represent borrowers and lenders in connection with warehouse lines of credit, floor plan financings, and single-lender and syndicated lending arrangements;
• Represent institutional investors and financial institutions in connection with acquisition and sales of motor vehicle lease and loan portfolios;
• Establish and structure lease titling trusts;
• Negotiate servicing agreements and development agreements; and
• Advise auto finance companies and financing institutions on e-vaulting and transition to electronic contracting, as well as related UCC Article 9 issues.

Our Automotive Finance team is augmented by the capabilities of our regulatory lawyers and litigators, who are fluent in several of the federal and state laws governing the financial practices of the automotive sector, including the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act (FDCPA), the Fair Credit Reporting Act (FCRA), Truth in Lending Act and Regulation Z, Equal Credit Opportunity Act and Regulation B Dodd-Frank and CFPB regulations, the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA), as well as analogous state laws on debt collection, credit reporting, competition, and consumer credit practices.