Robert Farmer

About Robert Farmer

Robert Farmer is a partner in Gowling WLG's Toronto office whose work sits on the lending side of Canadian finance. Clients include some of the country's major financial institutions as well as lenders based in Canada and the US, on financings that can be domestic or cross-border. Specialized and private lenders call on Farmer too, among them lenders doing asset-based deals, mezzanine debt and personal loans.

Real estate is one of the practice's main threads. Farmer has been lead counsel to an agent and lenders on a current portfolio of roughly 70 large development projects, and has also acted for a developer arranging senior syndicated and mezzanine debt for a multi-phase project. The advisory side covers M&A, capital raises and investments, ownership and corporate structures, and fund formation, including a fund a private client set up to invest in real estate.

Law wasn't the first career. Farmer spent 20 years in finance and investment banking before practising, as a senior officer at a Canadian bank and as head of a private investment fund. The Ontario call came in 2012, and Farmer makes a point of bringing that business experience to bear so the advice clients get is practical.

Before Gowling WLG, Farmer practised at Dickinson Wright, which made Farmer a partner in its Toronto office effective January 1, 2021, and where Farmer led the Canadian banking group. The move to Gowling WLG came as a partner in the national banking and finance group in Toronto.