[ CORPORATE & SECURITIES ATTORNEYS ]
As one half of the two-member firm, Kingston Petersen,
based in Seattle, Andrew Kingston provides one-on-one
personalized counsel for his clients. An honors graduate of
Harvard Law School, Andrew has been practicing corporate
and securities law for more than 27 years. He got his start in
the EB-5 industry in 2009 and has since acted as securities
law counsel for EB-5 private placements, working directly
with issuers in each case.
Andrew Kingston
Before Andrew takes on any EB-5 project – and he
turns away a fair number so that he can provide highly
concentrated service to those he does accept – he performs
comprehensive due diligence to confirm project reputability.
As a result, he has helped a number of EB-5 projects become
fully subscribed. He finds that even though he plays a
relatively small role in a much larger project, knowing he is
part of a successfully developing enterprise is one of the most
gratifying aspects of working in EB-5.
working in EB-5. He
hopes that as EB-5
practitioners continue
to accrue experience,
the quality of projects
and EB-5 legal work
will continue to improve,
and EB-5 will become a more
accepted financing tool.
Andrew’s success in his EB-5 corporate and securities work
also lies in his ability to help project sponsors adjust their
expectations. He has found that sponsors sometimes think of
EB-5 financing as easy money, and he is skilled in explaining
that the process is time-and-effort-intensive without any
guaranteed success. Andrew has seen the industry become
muc h more serious, attracting a greater quality of professionals
across all of its dimensions compared to when he first began
Ultimately, when somebody hires Andrew for an EB-5
project, they get an indefatigable commitment to their case
and the benefit of three decades of experience providing
financing, transactional and corporate law services to clients
throughout the world. Andrew has also served as an adjunct
professor of law at Cornell University. A resident of Seattle,
Andrew devotes his free time to hiking in the mountains,
traveling and spending time with his family.
Before Steve Park entered the EB-5 space, he had already
gained a reputation in the Southeast region, particularly
among Korean companies. When one of his clients—a major
tier one automobile parts supplier—approached Steve in
2008 looking to use EB-5 financing to ramp up production,
he readily took the project. Steve worked with Top 25
Immigration Attorney Stephen Yale-Loehr to structure a
deal for a regional center that would spearhead the financing.
Steve is a partner at Nelson Mullins Riley & Scarborough
LLP in Atlanta and now works regularly with regional center
clients and developers to structure EB-5 deals.
Steve estimates that about 50 percent of his current
workload is made up of EB-5 projects, while the other
portion is made up of finance deals. This bifurcation helps his
EB-5 practice, as Steve brings his experience in finance to the
negotiating table when structuring EB-5 deals. Because Steve
has an intimate knowledge of finance, he brings an extra layer
of expertise when advising his clients on how to structure
the EB-5 capital stack. Additionally, his strong relationships
with traditional banks means that he understands loan
transactions and the role that traditional and EB-5 lenders
can play in EB-5 deals.
Because of the nature of the clients he represents, Steve
has encountered many different aspects of law and business
practices during his career. The EB-5 industry, he says, is
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Steve Park
the one space where all
of those skill sets come
together—there he exercises
his securities and finance
expertise, along with his understanding of the immigration requirements of the program. To supplement his
securities and finance counsel, Steve will often interface with
experienced immigration attorneys to take a comprehensive
look at the deal.
Steve appreciates the diversity of work he can perform
within the EB-5 industry and the fact that each case allows
him to wear many different hats. He is fluent in Korean,
has represented public companies on securities compliance
issues, and has spoken on finance and securities issues for
EB-5 regional centers.
EB5 INVESTORS MAGAZINE