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Meet Our Professionals

E. Tyler Smith

Partner
Greenville | 864.577.6364
Fax | 864.242.9888

Tyler Smith's practice focuses in the areas of tax equity project finance, taxable and tax-exempt bond finance, and conventional lending. He has represented and advised numerous financial institutions, bond issuers, and borrowers throughout the Southeast and beyond. Tyler has substantial experience in the field of new markets tax credits, representing parties from the perspectives of the QALICB/borrower, leverage lender, source lender, and community development entity (CDE) in such transactions. Additionally, Tyler advises clients on transactions involving renewable energy tax credits.

Tyler also has extensive experience in interest rate swaps and other derivative transactions and the transition from LIBOR to SOFR and other benchmark replacements, as well as complex investment products that include guaranteed investment contracts, securities forward delivery agreements, repurchase agreements, and equity linked notes. He has been involved in a wide array of transactions involving up to multiple billions of dollars.

His relationships with representatives of local, regional, and global financial institutions, financial advisory firms and organizations such as the National Association of Bond Lawyers connect Tyler to a network of information and knowledge of industry practices that he regularly incorporates into his practice.

His undergraduate and graduate level education in mathematics, economics, and law, together with extensive transactional experience, make him well-positioned to understand complex economic transactions and to advise clients on a breadth of potential transaction structures, options, risks, and solutions.

Representative Experience

  • Advised from various sides of new markets tax credit transactions throughout multiple states.
  • Advised on conventional loans of varying natures, including project finance, syndicated credit facilities and asset based lending (ABL) facilities.
  • Advised multiple health care, educational, governmental, and other entities as to agreements for the investment of project funds, debt service funds, and reserve funds in an amounts aggregating to multiple $100 millions.
  • Served as special swaps counsel to a San Francisco-based nonprofit organization in the entering of two interest rate swaps in the aggregate notional amount of $100 million.
  • Advised a substantial number of clients as to their options under interest rate swaps and reinvestment agreements, in light of the impacts of the 2008 financial crises, the bankruptcies of Lehman Brothers and its subsidiaries, and general concerns over the credit standing of swap and investment providers.
  • Advice to both financial institutions and borrowers as to the phase-out of LIBOR to SOFR and other alternate benchmark rates.
  • Served as special swaps counsel to a state in connection with the restructuring of derivative transactions having combined notional amounts of over $360 million.

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Honors & Awards

  • The Best Lawyers in America "Lawyer of the Year" in Greenville for Public Finance Law, 2017, 2020, 2022, 2025
  • The Best Lawyers in America in Public Finance Law, 2008-2025
  • Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers in Banking & Finance, 2017-2024
  • Greenville Business Magazine's "Legal Elite" in Banking & Finance Law, 2016, 2018, 2020; Government Finance, 2022

Memberships

  • National Association of Bond Lawyers, Board of Directors, 2013-2015; Member, 1997-present
  • North Carolina Bar Association, 1994-present
  • MENSA International, 2011-present
  • Duke Law Journal, Member and Articles Editor
  • Pi Mu Epsilon, U.S. National Honorary Mathematics Society
  • Omicron Delta Epsilon, International Honorary Economics Society