Weil, Gotshal & Manges

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Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP

Type	Limited Liability Partnership
Founded	1931
Headquarters	New York, NY
Industry	Law
Products	Legal services
Employees	Approximately 1,200 Attorneys
Website	www.weil.com

1 History
2 Key People
3 Notable Deals and Cases
4 Controversies
5 Footnotes
6 External links

[edit] History

Weil, Gotshal & Manges was founded in New York City in 1931. It is one of the largest and most highly regarded law firms in the world. A 2006 survey of large firms placed the firm as the 11th largest law firm in the world in terms of revenue. In 1968 Weil Gotshal moved to the firm's current New York headquarters in midtown Manhattan overlooking New York City's Central Park. In 1975, the firm formally opened its first office outside of New York, in Washington DC. The Washington office now houses approximately 80 lawyers in practices including antitrust, bankruptcy, environmental law, international trade, public policy, litigation/regulatory, real estate, securities and tax. The Miami office followed, opening its doors in 1981. The firm established its Texas offices in Houston, Dallas and Austin in 1985, 1987, and 2002 respectively. Together these offices have grown to a combined complement of more than 120 lawyers.

In the early 1990s, Weil Gotshal became the first major national US law firm to open a Silicon Valley office, which today offers a technology and intellectual property-oriented litigation and corporate practice. In 2002, Weil Gotshal opened the Boston office and in 2005, and Providence office, continuing its expansion in important financial centers.

Today, international capabilities are provided by offices in Budapest, Frankfurt, Hong Kong,London, Munich, Paris, Prague, Shanghai, and Warsaw. The Budapest office opened in 1991 and was followed by the Warsaw office that same year and the Prague office in 1992. In March 1996, Weil Gotshal established a broad-based US and UK law capability in London.

In 2000 the Frankfurt office was opened and in 2004, Munich was opened to meet the commercial needs of clients in this increasingly important financial center. Weil Gotshal’s expanded in Europe in 2003 with the opening of a Paris office.

In 2004, the Shanghai office was opened and in 2007 the Hong Kong office was opened, serving clients in China and other Asian markets.

[edit] Key People

Stephen Dannhauser, Chairman of Weil Gotshal, has been with the firm since 1975. He has played a key role in crafting and executing the business strategies that moved Weil Gotshal into the top tier of international law firms.
Matt Powers, Co-Chair of Weil Gotshal's Litigation/Regulatory Department and a member of the patent practice, he is known for his involvement in many difficult and complicated cases with a high success rate of winning such cases in trial. He recently took on a known patent troll for Microsoft and won.
Caitlin J. Halligan, former Solicitor General of New York State, is the head of the Weil Gotshal’s Appellate Litigation practice group. She is a lecturer at Columbia Law School, and clerked for Judge Patricia M. Wald of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit, and for U.S. Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer.
Barry M. Wolf, a member of the Management Committee and co-chairman of the Corporate department.
James W. Quinn co-chairs Weil Gotshal’s Litigation/Regulatory practice, named several times by National Law Journal as one of the ten top trial lawyers in the United States.
Thomas Roberts, co-chairman of the over 600-lawyer Corporate department and a member of the firm’s Management Committee.
Marcia Goldstein, chair of the Business, Finance & Restructuring department and a member of the firm's Management Committee. She has been at Weil Gotshal for over 30 years and is has handled some of the biggest bankruptcy cases in the world, including the restructuring of WorldCom, Inc.
Michael Francies, managing partner of the London office and has experience in public and private mergers & acquisitions, private equity transactions and equity issues.
Gerhard Schmidt, managing partner of the German offices and one of the leading private equity and M&A lawyers in Germany. He is one of the few German lawyers to combine competencies in corporate and tax law.
Harvey R. Miller has been described by The New York Times as "the most prominent bankruptcy lawyer in the nation"^[1].

[edit] Notable Deals and Cases

Represented Centerpulse in its $3.2 billion acquisition by Zimmer Holdings Inc., following a takeover contest with Smith & Nephew PLC., named Euromoney Deal of the Year in 2004
Represented Vivendi Universal in its $14 billion sale of Vivendi Universal Entertainment to NBC (owned by General Electric Company).
Advised Terra Firma Capital Partners Ltd. in connection with its £3.2 billion going private acquisition of EMI Group plc.
Represented Lenovo Group Limited in its $1.75 billion acquisition of IBM's global PC business.
Represented Providence Equity Partners Inc. in the $11.3 billion going private acquisition of SunGard Data Systems Inc., named IFLR Deal of the Year for 2005
Represented Vivendi S.A. in the $1.154 billion acquisition of Matsushita Electric’s 7.7% stake in Universal Studios Holdings
Represented a private equity consortium led by TPG Capital and Credit Suisse First Boston Private Equity in the €2.25 billion acquisition of Grohe AG from BC Partners.
Represented Fujian Sedrin Group Co., Ltd. in its $740 million sale of Sedrin Brewery Co., Ltd. to InBev N.V. (Honorable Mention for Asia Deal of the Year 2006).
Represented Genworth Financial, Inc. in the $2.8 billion initial public offering.
Represented Candover Investments plc in its €220 million acquisition of the High Technology Optics division of Thales S.A.
Represented JP Morgan, Citi and Goldman Sachs Credit Partners in the $18.485 billion financing for Ford Motor Company, - the largest ever corporate debt financing, winning Banking and Finance Head Dan Dokos the esteemed Dealmaker of the Year by The American Lawyer.
Advised Grohe Group on the €2.1 billion merger of Grohe Water Technology AG & Co. KG into Grohe AG.
Represented Morgan Stanley, as co-manager of the $322 million Senior Floating Rate/Mezzanine Floating Rate Deferrable/Principal Protected Notes Offering by Tourmaline CDO I Ltd. and Tourmaline CDO I Corp. This CDO is considered the first true “hybrid” CDO in the US market and was named the ABS CDO Deal of the Year for 2005 by Asset Securitization Report.
Represented Merrill Lynch & Co., Inc. as financial advisor to Procter & Gamble Company in its $57 billion acquisition of The Gillette Company.
Represented Molson, Inc. in its $6.7 billion merger of equals with Adolph Coors Company.
Represented UnitedHealth Group Inc. in its $8.1 billion acquisition of PacifiCare Health Systems Inc.
Advised the investor group consisting of Madison Dearborn Capital Partners, Providence Equity Partners, Saban Capital Group, TPG Capital and THL Partners in connection with the $13.7 billion acquisition of Univision Communications Inc., the leading Spanish language media company in the US.
Representing Providence Equity Partners Inc., Ontario Teachers Pension Plan Board and Madison Dearborn Partners, LLC in the $48.5 billion going private acquisition of BCE Inc. (Bell Canada), the largest leveraged buyout in history.
Represented GE in the $2.15 billion sale of its Japanese life and U.S. home and auto insurance businesses to American International Group.
Represented Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Limited in the $2.6 billion secondary offering of 1.2 billion common shares in the form of American Depositary Shares held by Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.
Represented DLJ Merchant Banking, as sponsor, in a $1.79 billion financing for Warner Chilcott, in connection with the going private acquisition of Warner Chilcott PLC's remaining share capital.
Represented Yell Group PLC in a $3.2 billion Initial Public Offering.
Represented J.C. Flowers & Co. LLC, as lead member of a consortium of financial investors, in the €1.25 billion acquisition of a 26.6% stake in HSH Nordbank AG.
Represented the underwriters in the $1.3 billion initial public offering of Hertz Global Holdings, Inc.
Obtained major victory over patent trolls on behalf of Microsoft Corporation in a patent infringement suit in Beaumont, Texas, in which plaintiffs sought more than $750 million, concerning Microsoft’s Windows XP operating system.
Mangosoft, Inc. v. Oracle Corporation. Obtained summary judgment in patent infringement involving claims concerning database clustering software.
MasterCard Class Actions. Obtained decertification of the class, won a motion to compel arbitrations and obtained in dismissals in several class actions for Mastercard involving currency conversion fee.
UnitedHealth Group. Represented Mid-Atlantic Medical Services in the United States Supreme Court, on the issue of the enforceability under ERISA Section 502(a)(3) of provisions of health care benefit plans that require participants to reimburse the plan if they recover for their medical expenses from a third party, usually in a tort suit. Weil took this case all the way to the US Supreme Court and won a unanimous decision from the in favor of Mid Atlantic Medical Services, Inc. The court's opinion secured reimbursement rights for these health plans.
Johnson & Johnson. Obtained a complete defense verdict for Johnson & Johnson (with Sidley Austin and J&J in-house counsel) in an antitrust litigation concerning a discounting program in which Applied Medical Corporation alleged that J&J had gained a monopoly for medicals products by bundling them with surgical sutures at discounted prices for their best customers.
Yeda Research and Development. Obtained a trial victory for Yeda, directing that the named inventors on the patent protecting ImClone’s billion-dollar cancer drug, Erbitux, be replaced with Yeda’s scientists.
Silicon Graphics. Represented Silicon Graphics, Inc. and certain of its direct and indirect subsidiaries as debtors and debtors in possession in their chapter 11 cases.
Enron. Represented Enron in its chapter 11 bankruptcy and was effective in saving 24,000 jobs, all operating businesses, and $12 billion of going-concern value.
Loral Space & Communications. Represented Loral Space & Communications in cross-border restructuring effective under chapter 11.
Represented Worldcom Inc. ( including hundreds of affiliates such as MCI) in the largest ever bankruptcy case after the largest acts of U.S. corporate fraud.

[edit] Controversies

Misconduct ruling by federal judge In 1994, Weil Gotshal was found to have "damaged its client ... by not disclosing several potential conflicts of interest"^[2] by Tina Brozman, a federal judge. The firm was fined over $1 million for the undisclosed conflict of interest after review of the report by an examiner appointed to investigate the allegations against Weil Gotshal in the bankruptcy of the Leslie Fay Companies in the Southern District of New York. Weil Gotshal, described by the New York Times as "one of the country's largest and richest law firms" publicly defended itself in a letter to the editor by their Executive Partner Stephen J. Dannhauser which stated: "The pertinent rules and standards on disclosure are anything but clear. They have presented a problem for all professionals in bankruptcy cases."^[3]

Malpractice

In 2003 pop singer Michael Bolton sued Weil, Gotshal & Manges for breach of fiduciary duty related to a conflict of interest involving the firm's simultaneous representation of opposing parties in the same matter, also alleging that the firm conspired with the opposition. Bolton's suit was settled and term were not disclosed.^[4]
In 2006, a claim of malpractice against the firm was brought by a former client on the grounds that the firm failed to disclose its conflict of interest arising from having been hired by an affiliate of the opposing litigant. Senior lawyers at the firm had testified during the malpractice trial that they were not aware of the conflict until well into the original trial.^[5] Manhattan Supreme Court Justice Richard B. Lowe wrote that the conflict might "operate upon [the firm's lawyers] subtly in a manner likely to diminish the quality of their work."^[6] Weil, Gotshal & Manges settled just prior to the case going to the jury; payment terms were not disclosed.
In a suit filed December 12, 2007, David M. Radman, a Dallas businessman, claims that "the firm and two of its Dallas partners, Michael A. Saslaw and Robert C. Feldman, conspired with Radman's then-business partner and others to reduce Radman's interest in a proposed acquisition of a Dallas-based credit union subsidiary."^[7] Radman alleges the following against Weil and its two partners: breach of contract, breach of fiduciary duty, fraud, negligent misrepresentation, professional malpractice, violation of the Texas Deceptive Trade Practices Act, conversion, tortious interference with existing and prospective contracts and civil conspiracy to commit harm. The case is still pending.