Francesca Guolo

Francesca Guolo is a partner in a business law group at Goodmans, Head of both the firm’s Financial Services Regulatory Practice and its Structured Finance and Derivatives Practice, and Co-Chair of the firm’s Opinions Committee. She is a preeminent financial services lawyer with particular expertise in structured finance, securitization, derivatives, wealth management and the regulation of financial services market participants and products. Her experience spans North American and European markets and includes capital markets, restructuring and merger and acquisition transactions.

Francesca’s clients consistently rely on her insightful and practical business advice, and benefit from the breadth of her experience and perspective. She is often called upon to advise in the negotiation and execution of innovative, complex transactions driven by strategic, economic, tax or regulatory considerations. Notably, Francesca led the Goodmans legal team that represented and advised the Pan-Canadian Third Party Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Investors Committee in the successful restructuring of the C$32 billion non-bank sponsored asset-backed commercial paper market in Canada.

Francesca’s clients include domestic and international regulated financial institutions, broker-dealers, securities advisers, asset managers, mortgage lenders and financing companies as well as providers of back-office financial services and solutions, FinTech entrepreneurs, corporations, hedge funds and investment funds, federal and provincial governments, governmental agencies and crown corporations, financial services industry organizations, private family offices and high net worth individuals.

Francesca has been recognized as a leading lawyer in the following publications:

• Best Lawyers in Canada (Derivatives Law), 2025 (and since 2018)
• Best Lawyers in Canada (Mergers and Acquisitions Law), 2025 (and since 2020)
• Best Lawyers in Canada (Securities Law), 2025 (and since 2020) 
• Best Lawyers in Canada (Corporate Law), 2025 (and since 2022)  
• Best Lawyers in Canada (Structured Finance Law), 2022 
• Lexology Index (Capital Markets - Structured Finance), 2021 (and since 2014)
• Euromoney’s Guide to the World’s Leading Women in Business Law Expert Guide (Structured Finance and Securitisation), 2021 (and since 2016)
• Euromoney’s Banking, Finance and Transactional Expert Guide (Structured Finance and Securitisation), 2021 (and since 2016)
• The Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory (Consistently Recommended - Derivatives), 2025 (and since 2014)
• The Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory (Repeatedly Recommended - Corporate Finance), 2025, 2024 (and from 2014 - 2022)
• The Canadian Legal Lexpert Directory (Repeatedly Recommended – Mergers & Acquisitions), 2024
• Lexpert Special Edition: Canada's Leading Finance and M&A Lawyers (M&A) 2024, 2025 (and from 2020 - 2022)