Of the M&A practice, clients say: "It knows the work inside out and backwards, and its experience combined with the firm’s deep bench strength is a formidable combination. No matter what unusual circumstance arises during the transaction, there is someone within the firm who has gone through it before. They communicate among themselves on a global basis seamlessly - a form of knowledge management that adds significant value." — Legal 500 US (2010)
Our Mergers & Acquisitions practice represents companies, investment banks and private equity firms in public and private transactions worldwide. Our clients include Global 100 companies, private equity firms and investment banks as well as venture-backed companies who depend on our industry knowledge to support their formative transactions. We bring professionalism, attention to detail, creativity and commercial sensitivity to all of our M&A clients and transactions. In recent years, we have advised on over 200 completed mergers and acquisitions, with an aggregate value of more than $300 billion.
Covington’s approach to M&A combines our corporate expertise with our deep understanding of regulated industries and our commercial approach. This combination enables our clients to structure their transactions most advantageously and with a view towards meeting their legal and business requirements. Each client has access to Covington’s full resources, including industry expertise and substantive due diligence areas such as intellectual property, environmental, benefits, and tax with lawyers experienced in M&A processes and time demands.
M&A transactions benefit from a collaborative process; significant teamwork and the recognition of each party's goals are central to effective execution. Covington attorneys throughout the firm with varied practice and industry expertise team with our clients, their advisors, and any other parties to the transaction to ensure deals close successfully.
Our expertise covers the wide range of M&A activity, including public acquisitions and divestitures, “going private” transactions, proxy contests and unsolicited bids, spin-offs, acquisitions and divestitures of venture-backed and other private companies, private equity transactions, joint ventures and cross-border acquisitions, and divestitures. We help our clients complete their most important and sensitive transactions, practicing out of our New York, Washington, San Francisco and London offices.
Representative Matters
- The Procter & Gamble Company in its $3.1 billion sale of its global pharmaceutical business to Warner Chilcott.
- SandRidge Energy in its $1.6 billion stock and cash acquisition of Arena Resources, Inc.
- Forest Laboratories in its $1.2 billion acquisition of Clinical Data, Inc.
- Pepco Holdings in its $1.7 billion sale of electric generation assets to Calpine Corporation.
- Financial Federal Corporation in its $735 million sale to Peoples United Bank.
- King Pharmaceuticals in its $3.6 billion sale to Pfizer.
- Boehringer Ingelheim in its acquisition of assets of Wyeth’s Fort Dodge Animal Health business upon the closing of the global Pfizer-Wyeth merger.
- Kerr-McGee Corporation in its $18 billion sale to Anadarko Corporation; in its $3.4 billion stock-for-stock acquisition of Westport Resources Corporation; and in its defense and settlement of a proxy contest initiated by Carl Icahn.
Accolades
- Corporate Board Member – America’s Best Lawyers, Ranked in the top twenty firms nationally by corporate directors (2006-2010)
- Chambers USA - America’s Leading Business Lawyers, M&A (2008-2010)
- Legal 500 US, M&A - National Firms - Large Deals (2009-2010)
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