ApplePie Capital, a marketplace lender solely dedicated to the franchise industry, appointed Geoff Thompson general counsel. Thompson comes to ApplePie Capital from Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, an international law firm, where he advised clients on a broad range of corporate legal matters.

“Geoff will be instrumental in helping us meet our aggressive growth targets,” said Denise Thomas, ApplePie Capital’s CEO and co-founder. “His unusually broad legal practice, which covers the full spectrum of financial markets matters, will be invaluable to the company as we scale.”

As general counsel, Thompson is responsible for overseeing all of ApplePie Capital’s legal affairs, including advising on capital markets transactions, structured finance matters, equity fundraising, credit transactions and regulatory compliance, in addition to providing legal guidance to the board of directors and senior management. Thompson brings more than a decade of experience in corporate and financial law to ApplePie Capital.

At Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, Thompson focused on private equity, capital markets, credit and restructurings. Two of the transactions that he led in 2015, a $5.5 billion follow-on equity offering and a €500 million “green bond” offering paired with a liability management transaction, won “deal of the year” awards.

Prior to that, he spent four years as an associate at White & Case, specializing in cross-border capital markets, structured finance and credit transactions. He began his legal career as an associate at Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe, where he advised international investment banks on structured finance and project finance matters. His work there included representing the FDIC on a securitization of real estate assets acquired from failed financial institutions, which was named “Structured Finance Deal of the Year” by a Financial Times publication.

Prior to attending law school, Thompson worked as an associate at McKinsey & Company.