Face of Business
Expert in American Indian law adds Spaceport to client list
New Mexico Business Weekly - by Tom O'Connell NMBW Staff
Attorney Anne Browne is excited that her firm, Sutin, Thayer & Browne, has been hired as counsel by Virgin Galactic, the future anchor tenant of the new Spaceport, but she says she won't be getting fitted for a spacesuit anytime soon. The idea of traveling beyond the Earth's atmosphere holds no interest for her.
"No, thank you," says Browne. "Astronauts have to go to the bathroom in a way that I wouldn't enjoy. The adventure part of it sounds really interesting, but the practical part of it right now sounds unappealing."
Browne prefers digging in the earth rather than leaving it. When she is not helping close big Indian-casino deals, she likes to garden. She loves the Dallas Cowboys, but wishes the team "would just win once in my lifetime!" She also likes to hang out with her two "extremely spoiled" cairn terriers and refinish furniture.
"It's not very exciting, but very rewarding," she says of the hobby. "You start with a piece of junk and then you have a really nice finished piece."
Browne regularly speaks at seminars about real estate. She is a member of the New Mexico Estate Planning Council; the Real Property, Probate and Trust Section of the American Bar Association; and the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties, and serves on the board of the Albuquerque Public Schools Education Foundation.
Though she describes her life outside of work as "not very interesting, which is kind of sad," her professional life is anything but boring.
Browne started as an associate doing general commercial transactions and business law at Sutin, Thayer & Browne in 1994, and made partner three years later. As the name of the company suggests, she is carrying on a family tradition. Her father, Graham Browne, who died in 2003, was with the firm for 40 years, and founded its commercial and business arms.
"I'll tell you the worst day of my life: the day my dad died," she says. "The Browne on the door is him. ... I consider myself really lucky that I got to come here and work with him for so long. And then he died of complications from bypass surgery."
Browne studied art history at Franklin & Marshall College, near Philadelphia, and says that if she had it all to do over again, she would be an architect or museum curator. She earned her law degree in 1988 from the University of Bridgeport in Connecticut, where she concentrated in commercial and banking law. Browne's first law job out of college was as counsel at the former First National Bank in Albuquerque (now Wells Fargo), where she would become a vice president.
Her specialties at Sutin, Thayer & Browne are in the areas of Indian law, real estate, commercial finance and business transactions. Her clients, which include local, regional and national real estate companies and developers, rely on her expertise in massive transactions involving shopping centers, casinos, office buildings, apartment buildings and industrial sites.
Sutin, Thayer & Browne got started in Indian law "pretty much by accident," says Browne, when representatives from a tribe contacted the firm for help financing one of the three largest casinos in New Mexico. The firm currently works with every tribe in the state, and Browne personally works with three. The learning curve for working with the tribes was steep in the beginning.
"With the tribe we no longer represent, I was at a fractious meeting where they threw us out," says Browne. Her feeling on the matter is that the tribal reps were ill-prepared for the meeting, which led to an impasse.
But she and the firm have since learned to find their way in this new and complicated field of law. The challenges faced in handling transactions for American Indians generally have more to do with cultural norms and sovereign immunity. Tribes, says Browne, are like any U.S. government entity -- they are immune from the law unless they waive that immunity.
"They're a government, and they operate like one," says Browne. "They have different cultural components, and you have to learn them and appreciate them and work with them.
"For example, with one tribe we work with, we go before the tribal council a lot. There's more of a cultural way in how they operate. It's not like going before a city board. Most of the tribes we work with are extremely welcoming. They're happy to have you there as a guest and to work with you."
Browne says the most impressive Indian project she worked on was helping the Pueblo of Laguna, via its subsidiary, the Laguna Development Corp., finance the building of a hotel at an existing casino last fall. The deal involved a $100 million bond from several investors.
It was a significant deal in the Indian financing market, says Browne, because it was one of the first such deals where the debt received an investment grade rather than being deemed a junk bond. Even major Las Vegas concerns don't earn an investment grade rating, she says.
"It's really a testament to the skill and expertise that the members of the Laguna Pueblo showed," says Browne.
Browne's current projects include public improvement districts in Volterra, near the Sandia Mountain foothills, and Saltillo, on the West side. And then there are the early negotiations with Virgin Galactic and the New Mexico Spaceport Authority. Perhaps by the time commercial flights to outer space are actually implemented, Browne will have changed her tune about going into space herself.
"I guess if it gets to the point like on 'Star Trek,' where you don't have to wear a spacesuit... ."
toconnell@bizjournals.com | 348-8321
Related Industry News |
Latest News |
Most Viewed Stories |
Most Emailed Stories |
