Practice Areas
Charles A. Ognibene has focused on auto finance for more than 20 years. Mr. Ognibene leads a team of lawyers at Duane Morris that handles lender-dealer relationships, lender-OEM arrangements, auto dealer loans, dealer loan work outs, retail litigation, portfolio liquidity, and a broad and deep array of wholesale and retail auto finance matters.
Mr. Ognibene has served as outside regional counsel for Chrysler Financial, Ally Financial, and GM Financial. He and the Duane Morris auto finance team have handled more than 100 dealer bankruptcies and workouts. They wrote the floorplan and dealer mortgage loan documents for Chrysler Capital, and before that for Santander Bank. Mr. Ognibene assisted with Ally’s and Chrysler Financial’s documents, designed for off-the-shelf use without lawyer closing expenses in floorplan-only settings. He created a dynamic set of documents for a technology-based independent floor plan lender serving credit-challenged independent dealers. He designed Syndication Lite documents for one of Duane Morris’s bank clients, which documents are now used in deals for large dealer groups reaching beyond $500 million. The auto finance team has closed hundreds of auto dealer floorplan and mortgage loans.
Personal
Boston College Law School, J.D., cum laude, International Law Review; University of Massachusetts, B.A., summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa