Fifteen New Partners For Davis Polk – Law Firm & Legal News
NEW YORK– LAWFUEL – The Law Firm Newswire –Davis Polk & Wardwell today announced that Bjorn Bjerke, Mary Conway, Michael Davis, Avi Gesser, Harald Halbhuber, Kimberley D. Harris, Kirtee Kapoor, Jinsoo H. Kim, James C. Lin, Arthur S. Long, Mark M. Mendez, Edmund Polubinski III, Lanny A. Schwartz, Sarah K. Solum and Mischa Travers have been elected partners of the firm effective July 1, 2007. Davis Polk now has 160 partners in its offices in New York, Menlo Park, Washington, D.C., London, Paris, Frankfurt, Madrid, Hong Kong, Beijing and Tokyo.
Mr. Bjerke is a corporate lawyer focusing on complex structured products and derivatives including asset-backed debt instruments, fund linked instruments and credit based arrangements. His recent transactions include representing a large real-estate fund complex in a multi-billion dollar lending arrangement; representing large financial institutions in developing various fund-linked structures and derivative trading platforms and establishing synthetic CDO structures. He also represented ISDA as drafting counsel in connection with the 2006 ISDA Fund Derivatives Definitions and Delta Air Lines in connection with certain financing arrangements linked to Delta Sky Miles.
Ms. Conway is a tax lawyer concentrating in investment management matters, including the formation and operation of private equity funds, hedge funds, mutual funds and other pooled investment vehicles. She has provided advice to Chilton Investment Company, Credit Suisse, Crestview Partners, FrontPoint Partners, HRJ Capital, Integrated Finance Limited, J.P. Morgan, Magnetar Capital and Morgan Stanley, among others. Her practice includes partnership matters and international tax matters.
Mr. Davis is a corporate lawyer concentrating in mergers and acquisitions. The matters he has worked on recently include advising IPSCO in connection with its proposed sale to SSAB Sventskt Stål; Marsh & McLennan in connection with the proposed sale of Putnam Investments to Great-West Lifeco; IPSCO on its acquisition of NS Group; FrontPoint Partners on its sale to Morgan Stanley; MCI on its sale to Verizon; Ford on its acquisition of plants from, and the restructuring of its business relationship with, Visteon; and various other private equity and venture capital transactions.
Mr. Gesser is a litigator concentrating in securities class actions and enforcement, white-collar criminal defense matters and complex commercial cases. Currently, he is representing a major investment bank in class actions involving analyst independence issues. He also recently served as a lead negotiator of a multi-year comprehensive agreement between a large consumer products company and multiple governmental bodies related to international trade issues. He has represented corporations and individuals in various investigations that have been resolved favorably prior to trial. He was also part of the litigation team representing Delta Air Lines in its Chapter 11 restructuring.
Mr. Halbhuber is a corporate lawyer in the London office. His practice focuses on a broad range of corporate finance and mergers and acquisitions transactions. In corporate finance, he has advised both issuers and underwriters on debt and equity transactions. Most recently, he worked on several high-yield debt issuances by European issuers. He has also worked on several initial public offerings and rights offerings. His recent M&A transactions include advising Morgan Stanley on acquisitions in Russia, Italy and the U.K., and Carl Zeiss SMT in the structuring of a joint venture with Cymer and the acquisition of a U.S. nanotechnology company.
Ms. Harris is a litigator with extensive experience representing corporate clients in a variety of criminal, regulatory, and complex civil matters. Recent representations include: the Audit Committee of an auto parts manufacturer in connection with an internal investigation, as well as related criminal and regulatory investigations by the federal government; a major investment bank in connection with criminal and regulatory investigations of the bank’s IPO allocation practices; a former director of the New York Stock Exchange in connection with an investigation by the New York Attorney General and the SEC; and a major pharmaceutical company in connection with multiple complex civil class actions in both state and federal court.
Mr. Kapoor is a corporate lawyer who has had extensive experience in corporate finance, restructurings, workouts and mergers and acquisitions transactions. His experience also includes several transactions in India. His recent matters include advising The Gillette Company in connection with its $57 billion acquisition by The Procter & Gamble Company; Oracle Corporation on its $600 million acquisition of a majority stake in i-flex solutions; Oracle Corporation on its $5.85 billion acquisition of Siebel Systems and Delta Air Lines on its Chapter 11 restructuring generally and in connection with the over $10 billion unsolicited bid from US Airways.
Ms. Kim is a corporate lawyer concentrating in lending and other corporate finance transactions. She represents corporate clients and financial institutions in secured acquisition and other leveraged financings, unsecured financings, debt restructurings and exit financings. Recent representations include Freeport-McMoran Copper & Gold in a $11 billion senior secured financing in connection with its acquisition of Phelps Dodge, J.P. Morgan in a $4.5 billion debtor-in-possession facility for Delphi, Delta Air Lines in a $2.5 billion senior secured exit financing, and Goldman Sachs Credit Partners and Credit Suisse in a leveraged acquisition financing for Education Management.
Mr. Lin is a corporate lawyer in the Hong Kong office, advising on public and private corporate finance transactions, including initial public offerings, high-yield debt offerings and private equity investments. He advised China Merchants Bank on its $2.66 billion HKSE listing, Air China on its $1.24 billion HKSE/LSE listing; and the underwriters in the privatization and NYSE/HKSE listing of Aluminum Corporation of China. Mr. Lin has also worked on several NASDAQ IPOs, including the $124 million listing of Baidu.com and the $468 million listing of Himax Technologies. He regularly advises a number of Asian high-technology companies on U.S. law matters.
Mr. Long is a corporate lawyer advising U.S. and foreign banks on the regulatory implications of M&A transactions; private equity investments; the offering of new financial products, including derivatives; enforcement , compliance and bank insolvency issues; and, in the case of foreign banks, establishing U.S. offices. Representative matters he has worked on include Banco Santander’s investment in Sovereign Bancorp; SLM Corporation (Sallie Mae) on its proposed sale; the acquisition by Citizens Financial Group of Charter One Financial; Citigroup’s acquisition of Banamex; Banco Bilbao Vizcaya’s merger with Argentaria; and JPMorgan’s investment in KorAm Bank.
Mr. Mendez is a corporate lawyer focusing on equity derivatives. Recently, he has advised Citigroup, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs as book-running managers of a $1.5 billion offering by General Motors of convertible senior debentures and a Citigroup affiliate on the related capped call transaction; CVS Corporation in connection with a $2.5 billion collared accelerated share repurchase; Montpelier Re Holdings in connection with two variable share forward sale agreements; Morgan Stanley and Merrill Lynch in connection with the issuance of debt securities mandatorily exchangeable for shares of Class A common stock of Nuveen Investments; and JPMorgan in connection with the Microsoft Employee Stock Option Transfer Program.
Mr. Polubinski is a litigator representing corporations and individuals in a wide range of securities, professional liability, products liability, general commercial and acquisition-related litigation in federal and state courts. He also represents corporate and individual clients in investigations and other proceedings before various regulatory agencies, including the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Internal Revenue Service, and the New York Stock Exchange. Recent matters include the defense of an investment banking client in putative class action antitrust litigations; the representation of a corporate issuer and individual clients in class action securities litigation and a related SEC investigation; the defense of a major pharmaceutical company in nationwide consumer protection and product liability litigation; and the representation through trial of a big four accounting firm in litigation arising out of the failure of a large national bank.
Mr. Schwartz is a corporate lawyer advising on securities compliance, regulatory and transactional matters. His clients include major international banks, broker-dealers, securities exchanges, consulting firms, a securities industry trade association and a large life settlement provider. From 1999 to 2005, he was executive vice president and general counsel of the Philadelphia Stock Exchange. Previously, he was managing director and counsel at Bankers Trust Company, specializing in bank and broker-dealer regulation and investment banking. He speaks and writes regularly on securities market structure and regulatory issues, and was formerly a member of the adjunct faculty of Columbia University School of Law.
Ms. Solum is a corporate lawyer in the Menlo Park office, advising on capital markets transactions, mergers and acquisitions, SEC disclosure and corporate governance. Recent capital markets transactions include convertible debt offerings for Cadence Systems, Cypress Semiconductor and Equinix; investment grade debt offerings for Comcast, Oracle and Seagate; follow-on offerings for Kaiser Aluminum, Wet Seal and Onyx Pharmaceuticals; initial public offerings for Chipotle Mexican Grill and CAI International; and McDonald’s spin-out of Chipotle Mexican Grill. Mergers and acquisitions she has worked on recently include advising NetIQ on its sale to Attachmate WRQ and Oracle on its acquisitions of Siebel Systems and PeopleSoft.
Mr. Travers is a corporate lawyer in the Menlo Park office, advising technology companies and their underwriters and investors on mergers and acquisitions, securities offerings and other corporate transactions. Recent matters he has worked on include KLA-Tencor’s acquisitions of ADE, Therma-Wave, SensArray and OnWafer; Software AG’s acquisition of webMethods; Affymetrix’s acquisition of ParAllele; Comcast’s strategic partnership with TiVo; a $2.25 billion debt offering by Comcast Corporation; Affymax’s initial public offering; convertible debt offerings by Borland Software, Boston Properties, Informatica, Intel, Macrovision and Xilinx; and various investments in private companies by affiliates of Richemont.