Latham & Watkins has hired a pair of partners from Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz in New York to boost its finance and public M&A offering in the city.
Emily Johnson and Mark Stagliano – both Wachtell lifers – have joined Latham as partners in Manhattan, the firm said on Monday, Johnson in its banking and private credit and capital markets practices and Stagliano in its M&A and private equity practice.
Latham’s chair and managing partner, Rich Trobman, said the hires supported the firm’s focus on advising clients on complex transactions across the capital structure and high-profile public company M&A.
“No other firm combines our excellence and scale – nor our ambition – and Emily and Mark joining us is another major milestone for our firm,” he added.
The firm has been busily recruiting partners recently in New York, where it has grown into an 870-lawyer behemoth capable of poaching talent from Wall Street rivals once considered impenetrable.
Johnson and Stagliano’s arrival follows Latham making two high-profile raids on Wachtell last year, hiring restructuring partner John Sobolewski and Zack Podolsky, one of the top M&A dealmakers in the US.
Earlier this year Wachtell also saw M&A partner Alison Preiss leave for Simpson Thacher and litigator Noah Yavitz defect to Ropes & Gray – a cluster of exits for the storied Wall Street firm that has historically seen few departures.
Wachtell is among the most profitable firms in the US and one of the few Big Law firms to remain wedded to a traditional seniority-based lockstep compensation system, which can make it vulnerable to firms like Latham that can tempt younger partners generating large fees with more performance-based pay models.
Johnson, who made partner at Wachtell in 2019, focuses on all financing aspects of complex corporate transactions, including M&A, divestitures and spin-offs, with particular experience in company-side, issuer-focused financings. She has advised on the financing aspects of major transactions, including representing Diamondback Energy in its $26bn merger with Endeavor Energy Resources and Hess Corporation in its $53bn acquisition by Chevron Corporation.
Meanwhile, Stagliano’s practice focuses on public company and sponsor-side M&A, securities matters and corporate governance. His experience includes advising T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom in the $146bn merger of T-Mobile and Sprint and United Technologies in its $147bn merger with Raytheon.
At Latham, Johnson and Stagliano have joined a formidable corporate and finance practice that consistently tops the M&A rankings by deal value. Last year, the firm worked on global deals worth nearly $758bn, according to London Stock Exchange Group data, ahead of Kirkland & Ellis and Skadden in second and third place, respectively.
Meanwhile, the much smaller Wachtell, which fields around 270 lawyers from its single Manhattan office, rode a wave of megadeals to rise from 11th to fourth place with $663bn of deals, including advising Electronic Arts on its $55bn sale to a consortium led by Saudi Arabia’s Public Investment Fund. The firm is also guiding Warner Bros Discovery on its high-profile sale.
Wachtell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
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