Nancy S. Schwappach

After graduating from the University of Virginia School of Law, Nancy started her legal career at Sheppard, Mullin, Richter & Hampton. She then went on to work as in-house counsel for companies in a variety of industries, including as Associate General Counsel of an NYSE Fortune 250 company, General Counsel of an Apollo portfolio company and a Goldman Sachs operating platform and Senior Counsel at Steven Mnuchin’s OneWest Bank.  In 2017 Nancy formed her own law firm, which focuses on providing "in-house" legal assistance to small and mid-market companies on a monthly retainer or project basis.

• At Roll International Corporation (now known as The Wonderful Company), a privately owned diversified holding company, Nancy negotiated asset acquisitions and dispositions and financings, and managed legal matters related to land holdings, office leasing, intellectual property, licensing and franchise agreements.

• After leaving Roll, Nancy joined the then small legal department at KB Home, at the time the nation’s fifth largest production home builder. During her 11 years with the company, she was promoted to successively more responsible positions until she was named Vice President, Associate General Counsel in 2004. In this position, she reported to the Company’s Chief Legal Officer and worked directly with KB Home’s CEO, COO, CFO and CAO on a variety of significant matters including the acquisition and integration of four private homebuilders, KB Home’s mortgage company joint venture with Countrywide and major joint ventures and real estate investments, including the development of the JW Marriott / Ritz Carlton hotel and residences at LA Live. She also conceived, created and implemented a variety of corporate initiatives to allow the company to operate more efficiently with a reduced level of legal risk.

• Nancy was recruited by Jeff Gault, a former KB Home executive, as a real estate attorney and consultant at LandCap Partners, from its inception in October 2007 until it was dissolved in March 2009. In that capacity, she acted as General Counsel, overseeing the legal, regulatory and business strategy for the company which was a land investment platform funded by Goldman Sachs Whitehall Funds and Northstar Realty Finance Corp. The platform reorganized into a joint venture with Westbrook.

• OneWest Bank was formed by Steven Mnuchin and a group of investors in March 2009 to acquire from the FDIC the assets of IndyMac Bank. Nancy went to work with OneWest in April 2009 and was then the only transactional in-house lawyer to assist the General Counsel. She helped with everything from evaluating securitized loan transactions to determine whether mortgage borrowers could be offered loan modifications, to creating policies and procedures to manage the on-going, extremely complex, arrangements with the FDIC. Additional experience included:

  • She was present at the FDIC's closing of two additional financial institutions, and managed the legal issues involved in the acquisition and integration of those consumer and commercial loan operations.

  • She managed legal efforts to form - “from scratch” - and advised the commercial real estate work-out group, as it worked through more than $1.2 billion of non-performing loans.

  • She provided legal guidance to the newly formed commercial loan origination group.

  • She managed outside litigation counsel representing OneWest in consumer and commercial litigation.

• In 2014 Nancy was again recruited by Jeff Gault to become the first General Counsel of Classic Party Rentals. Jeff sat on the Board of this company, which had recently been acquired out of bankruptcy by Apollo. At Classic Nancy substantially reduced outside legal fees, established policies and procedures which significantly reduced the company's business and legal risk and negotiated the co-employment agreement and managed the process to transition the company's employees onto a co-employment platform with Insperity PEO.

Nancy left Classic in 2017 to form her own firm.  After embarking on her new endeavor, her first client was American Advisors Group, where she assisted her former General Counsel from OneWest Bank on a contract basis.