Press Room

NEW YORK – March 31, 2014 – In a difficult dealmaking environment, 12 lawyers from ten firms stood apart, playing pivotal roles in some of the most notable transactions of 2013. They are honored as Dealmakers of the Year in the April issue of ALM’s The American Lawyer and online at americanlawyer.com.

“We feature the lawyers behind complex deals that took real ingenuity and imagination to pull off,” said Kim Kleman, Editor in Chief of The American Lawyer. “Their deals involved mergers and acquisitions, capital markets, project finance and bankruptcy.”

The Dealmakers of the Year are:

• Steven Slutzky of Debevoise & Plimpton as issuer’s counsel in Verizon’s $49 billion debt offering, setting the stage for the year’s biggest acquisition.
• Jason Kyrwood of Davis Polk & Wardwell as financial advisers’ counsel in the $61 billion Verizon-Vodafone financing, by far the largest ever bank financing.
• Alan Denenberg of Davis Polk as underwriters’ counsel in the $2.1 billion Twitter IPO, working under extreme secrecy on the year’s most publicized deal.
• Francesca Odell of Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton as issuer’s counsel in Petrobras’ $11 billion notes offering, choreographing six tranches in three days.
• Carl Sanchez of Paul Hastings as acquirer’s counsel in the $7.1 billion Smithfield acquisition, the largest Chinese/American takeover, overcoming intense regulatory hurdles.
• Christopher Cox of Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft as target’s counsel in the $8.6 billion Élan acquisition, withstanding a hostile bid in Ireland without U.S.-style defenses.
• David Rosewater and Marc Weingarten of Schulte Roth & Zabel as counsel to individuals in a series of fierce shareholder activism campaigns and proxy contests with companies whose aggregate market cap exceed $50 billion.
• Gary Lee of Morrison & Foerster as debtor’s counsel in Residential Capital’s $1.45 billion bankruptcy, a case so contentious that it required three judges.
• Stephen Rooney of Mayer Brown as bond counsel in New York City’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s $200 million offering, needed when insurers withdrew after Hurricane Sandy.
• Steven Rosenblum of Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz as acquirer’s counsel in Dell’s $24 billion privatization, arguably the corporate soap-opera of the year.
• Patrick Dooley of Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld as acquirer’s counsel in the $512 million Steinway acquisition, testing a new Delaware statute on contested takeovers.

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