Lindsay R. Sparks

When the chairman of Dole Food Co. decided to reorganize the company and take it private for the second time in last decade, he turned to Sparks to handle the deal. She led the team to secure $1.2 billion in debt notes and credit facilities and coordinated with local counsel in several countries including Costa Rica and Guatemala. It was exciting to help make chairman David H. Murdock's vision for Dole a reality by getting them back to their core business of "investing in their own farms and production of agriculture," Sparks said.

Sparks represents a wide variety of companies in their financings, including Irvine medical device company Masimo Corp., who she helped clinch a $250 million line of credit last year. And as demand rises for data and cloud-based services, Sparks has been working on deals to acquire and expand data center businesses. She represented TechCore LLC, a private equity-backed real estate investment fund in its $437 million purchase of the One Wilshire building, a telecommunications hub in downtown Los Angeles. She also recently represented private equity firms GI Partners in its acquisition of cloud and data services company Peak 10 Inc. and TierPoint LLC in its acquisition of data center company Xand Corp. The terms of both those deals were undisclosed. Data center work is challenging because it requires forward thinking to craft the terms of the loans and to ensure the energy and infrastructure needs of data centers are included in contract terms. It is important that "the terms of the financing facilities gives my client the flexibility they need not to just operate their business but grow their business," Sparks said.

- Fiona Smith