Mergers & Acquisitions
You hire M&A lawyers to facilitate deals, not hold them up. Our team carefully assesses risk, and structures and negotiates your transactions to position you best. However, we don’t give you unnecessary, protracted updates on minor details. We maximize time by ensuring clear communication, lean staffing, and a keen understanding of your long-term objectives.
We have one of the country’s most experienced groups of M&A attorneys, advising businesses every day on how to access the market to achieve their strategic and liquidity objectives. With over 125 M&A attorneys throughout our firm, we have the depth to assemble a complete team of lawyers that can react quickly to solve the most critical challenges facing your business today. We serve clients ranging from Fortune 500 corporations, closely held companies, private equity sponsors, investment banks and special committees.
Experience
Alston & Bird M&A attorneys have extensive experience advising clients engaged in a full range of domestic and cross-border public and private transactions, including acquisitions and divestitures, mergers, leveraged buyouts, going-private transactions, strategic alliances and joint ventures. We have developed significant industry-specific knowledge in many cutting-edge industries, including:
- biotechnology;
- consumer products and services;
- energy;
- financial services;
- health care;
- insurance; and
- technology and telecommunications
Accolades
Our M&A practice is consistently among the most active in the nation.
- Ranked #21 under the category of “Top U.S. Advisors” based on U.S. announced deals, ranked by transaction value. (Factset, 2016).
- Ranked #8 in the category of “Legal Advisors to U.S. (South) M&A,” based on deal value for the first three quarters of 2016. (MergerMarket, 2016).
- Ranked #6 under the category of “2016 Banker Representation” in its year end issue (Corporate Control Alert, 2016).
Bringing Value to Our Clients
We operate based on two fundamental principles: first, that a client hires us to be facilitators, not roadblocks; and second, that we are there to protect the value of our client’s deal. We focus on our client’s business and long-term objectives and ascertain the elements of value in the deal for our client. We take a fully integrated approach to assessing the risks that affect value, negotiate to minimize those risks and structure the transaction so that the objectives are accomplished.
- Represented Adams Respiratory Therapeutics, the makers of Mucinex®, the number one product in the cough and cold market, in a $2.3 billion cash tender offer and merger under which Adams was acquired by Reckitt Benckiser Group plc, a global manufacturer and distributor of household and health care products.
- Represented AuthenTec Inc., a provider of mobile and network security solutions for enterprise, government, and consumer markets worldwide, in connection with Apple Inc.'s acquisition of AuthenTec, Inc. for $356 million in cash.
- Represented The Carlyle Group, a private global investment firm, in its $3.9 billion acquisition of CommScope, Inc., a leading global provider of communications and wireless infrastructure solutions.
- Represented Cogdell Spencer, a REIT based in Charlotte, and its design-build and development business, Madison-based Erdman, in its $750 million sale to Ventas, which owns more than 1,300 health care properties across the United States and Canada, including senior living facilities, medical office buildings and specialty hospitals.
- Represented Community & Southern Bank, a private-equity funded bank formed for the purpose of acquiring assets of failed banks, in connection with its acquisition of certain assets and assumption of approximately $2.5 billion of deposit liabilities of five failed banks from the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation.
- Represented Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, the financial advisor to Goodrich Corporation, a global supplier of systems and services to the aerospace, defense and homeland-security markets, in connection with its $18.4 billion acquisition by United Technologies Corp., a provider of high-tech products and services to the building and aerospace industries.
- Represented Dell Inc., the world's #3 supplier of PCs, that also provides a broad range of technology products for the consumer, education, enterprise and government sectors, in its $2.4 billion acquisition of Quest Software.
- Represented Georgia-Pacific LLC, one of the world’s leading manufacturers and marketers of building products, tissue, packaging, paper, cellulose and related chemicals, in its $400 million purchase of Canadian assets and U.S. equity interest from Grant Forest Products Inc.
- Represented Getinge AB, a leading global provider of products and systems within the healthcare and life sciences industries, in its $680 million acquisition of the US-based medical technology company Atrium Medical Corporation.
- Over the past four years, we have represented Graphic Packaging Corporation, a leading provider of paperboard packaging solutions to multinational and other consumer products companies, in a number of transactions with an aggregate deal value of over $2.1 billion, including its acquisition of assets from Delta Natural Kraft Inc.; its acquisition of substantially all of the assets of Sierra Pacific Packaging, Inc.; and in its merger agreement with Altivity Packaging, LLC, a paperboard packaging company whose majority interest is held by the private equity group TPG Capital.
- Represented Houlihan Lokey Financial Advisors, Inc., the financial advisor to High Sierra Energy LP, which markets and distributes crude oil and natural gas liquids, in its $693 million sale to NGL Energy Partners.
- Represented John Moretz, the chairman of the sock company Gold Toe Moretz, in its $350 million purchase by the Canadian sportswear company Gildan Activewear Inc.
- Represented Landmark Communications Inc., a privately held media company based in Norfolk, Virginia, in its sale of The Weather Channel and spin-off of its other businesses to NBC Universal and the private equity firms The Blackstone Group LP and Bain Capital LLC for $3.5 billion in cash.
- Represented the Special Committee of the Board of Directors of Sterling Chemicals, Inc., in the merger agreement in which Eastman Chemical Company acquired all of the outstanding equity of Sterling Chemicals for $100 million in cash.
- Represented Syniverse Technologies, a leading provider of technology and business solutions for the global telecommunications industry, in its $2.6 billion sale to The Carlyle Group, a global alternative asset management firm.
- Represented Whitney Holding Corporation in its $1.8 billion merger agreement between Hancock Holding Company, parent company of 112-year old Hancock Bank, and Whitney Holding Corporation, founded in 1883, whereby Whitney merged into Hancock in a stock-for-stock transaction.
Contacts
Highlights
A Top Advisor to Investment Banks Alston & Bird Ranked No. 6 in Banker Representations for 2016
Alston & Bird has been ranked among the leading counsel to investment banks advising on M&A deals valued in excess of $100 million during the first half of 2016.