Valley Bank, a regional bank with operations along key East Coast markets and California, is expanding its Chicago office with the hiring of Matthew Weidle as First Senior Vice President and Midwest Regional President.

In this new role, Weidle will focus on expanding Valley’s Commercial Banking presence in the Chicago market and Midwest region. Valley inherited the talented and well-established Commercial Banking team through Valley’s merger with Bank Leumi USA in April 2022. 

The past few years have seen strong liquidity in the marketplace coupled with unprecedented government support of certain borrowers; increased competition for secured transactions among banks and non-banks; and surprisingly fewer distressed transactions during the pandemic than would have been anticipated. As a result, lenders have not had to focus as much on managing distressed credits and the potential pitfalls and risks that are associated with them. As a few recent cases discussed below show, assertions of lender liability may arise in various contexts to an unsuspecting lender.