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 that 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, Silicon Valley, London and China offices.
Our M&A experience covers a range of industry sectors, in particular life sciences and healthcare, sports, financial institutions, energy (including clean tech and renewable energy), defense, technology, telecommunications, and media.
Representative Matters
- Grupo Financiero Banorte, the Mexican financial group, and its affiliate Afore XXI Banorte in the $1.6 billion acquisition of Afore Bancomer from Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA), the Spanish bank, to create Mexico’s largest pension fund.
- Axis-Shield plc, an international company listed on the London and Oslo Stock Exchanges, in its £235 million all cash public takeover by Alere, Inc., a US company listed on the New York Stock Exchange.
- Boehringer Ingelheim in its acquisition of assets of Wyeth’s Fort Dodge Animal Health business upon the closing of the global Pfizer-Wyeth merger.
- Bristol-Myers Squibb in its all-cash acquisition of Amira Pharmaceuticals for a purchase price of $325 million upfront and potential additional milestone payments totaling $150 million.
- The Special Committee of Independent Directors of Charlotte Russe in its $380 million acquisition by Advent International and its successful defense of a proxy contest initiated by KarpReilly LLC.
- Christopher Cohan in connection with his sale of the Golden State Warriors, an auction that, at $450 million, yielded the highest sales price for any NBA team in history.
- Coty, Inc. in its $800 million acquisition of Unilever’s global prestige fragrance business and in the auction and sale of its Chinese subsidiary, Yue-Sai cosmetics, to L’Oreal.
- CVG Inc., a provider of secure, satellite-based communications solutions, in its acquisition by Integral Systems, Inc.
- Financial Federal Corporation in its $735 million sale to Peoples United Bank.
Accolades
- Corporate Board Member - America’s Best Corporate Law Firms
- Ranked in the top 25 firms nationally by general counsel (2007-2012)
- Ranked in the top 25 firms nationally by corporate directors (2006-2011)
- Chambers USA - America's Leading Business Lawyers (2012)
- Corporate/M&A (DC) - Firm (Band 2)
- Corporate/M&A (NY) - Firm (Band 3)
- Corporate/M&A (NY): Scott Smith (Band 3) and J. D. Weinberg (Band 5)
- Corporate/M&A and Private Equity (DC): Andrew Jack (Band 3) and David Martin (Band 3)
- Chambers Global (2012)
- Corporate/M&A: Peter Laveran-Stiebar and Ralph Voltmer
- Chambers UK (2013)
- Corporate/M&A - Mid-Market: Paul Claydon and Kristian Wiggert
- Best Lawyers in America (2012)
- Corporate: Scott Smith
- Mergers & Acquisitions: David Brown, Len Chazen, Bruce Deming, Bruce Wilson
- Chambers Asia-Pacific (2012-2013)
- Corporate/M&A (India): Ralph Voltmer
- Legal 500 Asia Pacific, Beijing - Corporate and M&A (2013)
- Legal 500 US (2012)
- M&A: National firms: large deals ($1B-$5B), Band 3
- M&A “Recommended”: Jack Bodner, Catherine Dargan, Bruce Deming, Stephen Infante, Andrew Jack, David Martin, Andrew Ment and Scott Smith
- Legal 500 Latin America (2012)
- Corporate and M&A
- Corporate and M&A: Rubén Kraiem and Gabriel Mesa
- Legal 500 UK, Corporate and commercial/M&A: upper mid-market and premium deals, £250m+ (2011-2012)
- Practical Law Company (PLC) (2012)
- DC: Corporate/M&A (highly recommended)
- England: Corporate/M&A (recognized)
- India (foreign counsel): Corporate/M&A (recommended)
- USA: Life Sciences - Which Law Firm?: Corporate (recommended)
- Mergermarket, Top 20 for North American and for European/Benelux M&A (2011)
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