Hays is a partner and shareholder in Archer’s Haddonfield office. She serves as chair of the firm’s Business Counseling Group and has more than 30 years of experience representing companies and financial institutions in complex business transactions, including business financing, securities offerings and compliance, director advisory services, mergers and acquisitions, and technology transfer and licensing. Hays’ clients range from small, local businesses to large international corporations (both privately-held and public), as well as startup and development stage.
Hays provides her business clients with general representation in areas such as entity formation, risk management/mitigation, corporate governance, and corporate reorganizations and dissolution. With a strong financing background, her experience encompasses a broad array of transactions, both debt and equity, including public offerings, private placements, institutional lending (on behalf of both lenders and borrowers), venture capital, asset securitizations, and sale/leaseback transactions. These financings include numerous transactions with a size of $100 million or more.
In the area of mergers and acquisitions, Hays regularly represents companies, owners, buyers, sellers and executives in transactions such as asset purchases, stock purchases, joint ventures and strategic alliances. Her experience includes transactions involving public companies, private equity firms, financially distressed sellers, intellectual property assets, Hart-Scott-Rodino antitrust compliance, assets located outside of the United States, and complex licensing and regulatory issues. She has particular expertise with M&A transactions in the home health care, automobile dealership, vehicle fleet management, and consumer products industries.
Hays assists clients across diverse industries with contract preparation, review and negotiation. The types of contracts include procurement, vendor, professional services, supply, licensing and distribution agreements, as well as trade secret, confidentiality, non-solicitation and non-disclosure agreements intended to protect proprietary business information and relationships. She is also a member of Archer’s COVID-19 Task Force and represents clients in various industries with respect to government disaster loan programs, including the Paycheck Protection Program and Economic Injury Disaster Loans.
