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CROSS EXAMINED A real superhero Stephen Halperin does billion-dollar deals, mentors young lawyers, volunteers for hospitals, donates funds to help law students, and still finds time for a date night with his wife. BY NAOMI CARNIOL I n Stephen Halperin's office, 15 glass shelves are filled with mementos from corpor- ate transactions. A mini red convertible marks a deal with Magna International Inc. A tiny bronze workboot celebrates Canadian Tire's acquisition of Mark's Work Wearhouse. Halperin, a partner at Goodmans LLP who co-chairs its corporate securities group, is at the top of dealmaker lists in Canada and around the world. Euromoney chose him as one of the 25 leading capital markets lawyers in the world. Another man receiving these accolades might walk with a bit of a swag- ger. Halperin, 60, is gracious, soft-spoken, and humble. Halperin has provided legal advice that has steered multimillion- and sometimes multibillion-dollar deals that have shaped the fortunes of Canadian and international companies for 30 years. At Goodmans, he led the team that defended Royal Group Technologies from a proposal for a hostile takeover bid by Cerberus, which led to the company's friendly $1.7-billion sale to Georgia Gulf Corp. He represented Avion Group in its $500-million takeover of Atlas Cold Storage and Fortress Investment Group's $2.8-billion acquisition of Intrawest. The large dollar figures generate newspaper headlines, but don't impress Halperin. "Some of the most interesting and challenging work that I do is on relatively small sums of money," he says. Halperin relishes the problem-solving aspects of corporate law. "What separates the really good lawyers from the OK lawyers is the ability to apply the law creatively, innovatively, in a way that has never been done before," he says. For proof of Halperin's creativity, look at the Asset-Backed Commercial Paper deal. In August 2007, the $32-billion Canadian ABCP market froze due to worries assets behind the notes involved high-risk loans, such as U.S. subprime mortgages. Investors were uncertain whether they would recover their funds. The Pan-Canadian Investors Committee for Third-Party Structured Asset-Backed Commercial Paper wanted to restructure the market in order to salvage the invested funds. Goodmans advised the committee. For 18 months, Halperin led a team of 40 lawyers who worked on restructuring the market, negotiating with govern- ments, banks, brokerage firms, and investors. The eventual settlement allowed investors with less than $1 million in ABCP to get refunds of all their money plus interest from brokerage firms. Larger investors would receive a new type of bond for their investments. For 18 JUNE 2010 www. C ANADIAN Law ye rmag.com