Sullivan & Cromwell - M&A Practice

M&A Practice

As mergers and acquisitions (M&A) became an increasingly important part of the corporate landscape in the 1970s, most of the leading white shoe firms of the day would not work on hostile takeovers, leaving it to other now leading law firms, like Wachtell Lipton and Skadden Arps. George Kern led the firm's M&A effort in the 1970s and 1980s. Kern was a colorful figure and was widely viewed, at S&C, as one of the early leading M&A lawyers. As the commercial banking industry began to consolidate in the 1980s, S&C partner and current chairman H. Rodge Cohen became involved in many of the key deals. Joe Frumkin is the managing partner of an M&A department that includes Jim Morphy and Frank Aquila, along with elders Ben Stapleton and Neil Anderson. Rodge Cohen continues to be the firm's leading financial institutions M&A lawyer. With high-profile assignments from multinationals such as BP, Diageo, Philips, France Telecom, InBev, British Airways, Scottish Power, Endesa, and Vodafone, Sullivan & Cromwell has carved out a niche in cross-border M&A. Partners Rich Morrissey in London and Chun Wei in Hong Kong lead the firm's non-US mergers practice. The firm has consistently ranked at the top among law firms involved in worldwide M&A transactions. Globally, Sullivan & Cromwell leads the M&A league tables, ranking first by value among law firms representing principals in announced transactions in 2007 (as was also the case in 2006, 2005 and 2004), according to data from Bloomberg and Euromoney Institutional Investor PLC's Dealogic.