Experienced in structured finance, derivatives, bankruptcy, securitization, sales and trading, secured lending, SPVs, swaps, repos, securities transactions, bank loans, distressed investments, leveraged finance, structured products, life settlements, litigation finance and other non-bank finance products.

Allen has held numerous senior legal and business positions throughout his career (including general counsel, chief operating officer and managing director), and was a leading front office member of various fixed income and derivatives trading desks. Before moving into private practice, Allen began his career at the Office of the New York State Attorney General, and then worked for a federal chief judge in New York.

He has over 30 years of experience in finance and law, including working in the investment banking divisions of Credit Suisse, UBS and Bank of America. During the 2008 financial crisis, Allen served Credit Suisse as its chief bankruptcy counsel, responsible for managing the global bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and advising senior management. Before moving to a front office role on the trading floor where he managed a financing and trading business that he co-created and developed, Allen served as the deputy to the CEO’s senior adviser, where he was instrumental in the development and implementation of a new fast-track recapitalization procedure and framework for a failing global financial institution. Such procedure and framework were subsequently adopted by regulators in the United States and Europe, and are being used to end the industry’s global too-big-to-fail problem. Allen also advised senior management on the bank’s Living Will and Global Recovery and Resolution Plan, as well as its Basel III Global Netting Remediation initiative (the impact of securities financing transactions on risk-weighted assets and bank capital requirements).

In addition to his law firm and sell side experience, Allen has worked on the buy side in private equity.

Allen is also a published author and lecturer in the financial services space, including having served as an adjunct assistant professor of financial management at New York University.