Kirkland Expands M&A Practice with Hire of Leading Corporate Attorney Eric Schiele in New York
Kirkland & Ellis LLP announced today that leading mergers and acquisitions attorney Eric Schiele has joined the New York office as a partner in the Corporate Practice Group. Mr. Schiele joins the Firm from Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP, where he was a partner in the corporate department.
“Eric is an outstanding M&A lawyer and one of the most respected transactional attorneys in the country. He will be an invaluable addition to our top-tier M&A and private equity practice in New York,” said Jeffrey C. Hammes, Chairman of Kirkland’s Global Management Executive Committee. “His extensive experience representing clients on high-profile M&A transactions and activism defense matters will complement the premier M&A and private equity platform we have in New York and across the Firm.”
High-profile assignments for Mr. Schiele include representing Disney in its pending $66 billion acquisition of 21st Century Fox; Time Warner on a number of M&A transactions, including its pending $109 billion sale to AT&T; Honeywell in its $90 billion proposal to acquire United Technologies; Anheuser-Busch InBev in its $123 billion acquisition of SABMiller and the $12 billion sale of SABMiller’s U.S. and global Miller branded businesses to Molson Coors; Northrop Grumman in its pending $9.2 billion acquisition of Orbital ATK; and H.J. Heinz and 3G Capital in Heinz’s $60 billion merger with Kraft Foods Group to form The Kraft Heinz Company, among numerous others. Mr. Schiele is a market leader in spin-offs and other alternative separation and acquisition transactions, and also has extensive experience in hedge fund activism defense.
Mr. Schiele has been repeatedly recognized as a leading lawyer in mergers and acquisitions by publications including Chambers USA, The Legal 500 U.S., IFLR1000 and Lawdragon. He received a B.A., summa cum laude, from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1996 and a J.D. with Highest Honors from the University of Texas School of Law in 2000, where he was a member of the Chancellors honor society and an associate editor of the Texas Law Review.
“It was a difficult decision to leave Cravath and I will always be grateful for the years I spent there. But I’m excited about joining Kirkland, a firm that is known for leading on many of the most high-profile and complex M&A/PE deals globally and with an extremely dynamic team,” said Eric Schiele. “I look forward to using my range of experience to help grow and expand upon the already stellar, leading M&A/PE practice at Kirkland.”
Kirkland’s M&A/private equity practice is an adviser to public and private companies and firms on all types of M&A transactions, including negotiated and unsolicited acquisitions; public company mergers; going-private transactions; spin off transactions; acquisitions of minority interests; tender and exchange offers, and joint ventures.
About Kirkland & Ellis
Kirkland & Ellis LLP (www.kirkland.com) is a law firm with more than 2,000 attorneys representing global clients in M&A/private equity, restructuring and other complex corporate transactions, litigation/dispute resolution and arbitration, and intellectual property matters. The Firm has 13 offices around the world: New York, Beijing, Boston, Chicago, Hong Kong, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Munich, Palo Alto, San Francisco, Shanghai and Washington, D.C.
