Eric L. Schiele, P.C.
Overview
Eric Schiele is a corporate partner in the New York office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. His practice encompasses M&A and public company board and special committee advisory work, including hostile takeover and hedge fund activism defense. Over the course of his career, Eric has advised on announced M&A transactions with an aggregate value of well over $1 trillion.
Eric has been repeatedly recognized as a leading lawyer in mergers and acquisitions. In 2021, Insider profiled him as one of 29 M&A lawyers “leading the way on billion-dollar M&A deals.” In 2020, Eric was one of six M&A attorneys nationwide chosen as a Law360 MVP, and one of seven attorneys nationwide chosen by The American Lawyer as a finalist for its 2020 “Corporate Lawyer of the Year” award. He was recognized for his M&A work by Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business from 2015 through 2024. Eric was also recognized by IFLR1000 from 2015 through 2022 and was named to Lawdragon’s list of the “500 Leading Lawyers in America” in 2016, 2017, 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024. He has also been recognized by The Legal 500 for his transactional work in the media and entertainment industry in 2017 and 2018, for his work on mergers & acquisitions (large deals – $1bn+) in 2018 through 2024, for his transactional work in the telecoms and broadcast industry in 2014 and 2017, and for his transactional work in the technology industry in 2015.
Eric is a frequent speaker on M&A topics, including co-chairing PLI’s Hot Topics in Mergers and Acquisitions conferences from 2014–2021 and chairing its Shareholder Activism conference in 2016 and co-chairing it in 2018 and 2019.
Representative Clients
Corporate clients that Eric has represented include, among others, AbbVie, Amcor, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Bristol-Myers Squibb, Constellation Brands, Disney, DreamWorks Animation, Fox Corporation, GlaxoSmithKline, H.J. Heinz, Honeywell, IBM, Johnson & Johnson, Kellanova, McDonald’s, Northrop Grumman, Norwegian Cruise Line Holdings, Taubman Centers, The Washington Post Company, Time Warner, Toll Brothers, Wynn Resorts, Xerox, Yahoo! and Zale Corporation. He also has extensive experience in hedge fund activism defense, including against, among others, Carl Icahn, Elliott Management, Greenlight Capital, Relational, Starboard Value and Trian.