Paul Hastings has hired a star dealmaker from Kirkland & Ellis in New York as it hones in on large-cap public M&A.
Eric Schiele, who spent nearly two decades at Cravath Swaine & Moore before moving to Kirkland in 2018, has joined Paul Hastings as global co-chair of M&A.
Schiele has advised on $1.2trn in announced deals over the course of his career, Paul Hastings said, including guiding Anheuser‑Busch InBev in its $123bn acquisition of SABMiller in 2016. Recently he has acted for Kellanova in its $35.9bn sale to Mars – the largest M&A deal of 2024 – and Amcor in its $8.4bn merger with Berry Global.
Paul Hastings chair, Frank Lopez, said Schiele’s hire marked a “major leap forward” in strengthening the firm’s public company M&A platform.
“Growing our market share of big-ticket public M&A and broader M&A volume is primary to our strategy. Eric’s industry reputation and track record in closing some of the highest-stakes and largest deals over the last 25 years will be instrumental for us to continue to gain market share at the top of the market.”
Schiele will lead Paul Hastings’ M&A practice with New York-based Eduardo Gallardo, who joined the firm in 2022 from Gibson Dunn & Crutcher and recently advised packaging firm Pactiv Evergreen in its $6.7bn acquisition by Apollo Global Management-backed Novolex.
GLP understands Gallardo is also co-leading the Paul Hastings team guiding CK Hutchison on the $23bn sale of its Panama ports to Blackrock, a coup for the firm given the Hong Kong conglomerate has regularly turned to Linklaters and Freshfields in the past for significant deal work.
Schiele’s hire continues a string of recent partner additions by the acquisitive Paul Hastings across M&A and private equity as it prepared for those transactional practices to kick into high gear, including a team of private equity lawyers that joined from Sidley Austin last spring to open the firm’s office in Boston.
Schiele will join recent arrivals in New York like finance partner Rachel Gray-Pundhir and public M&A and corporate governance partner Timothy Fesenmyer, who moved over last autumn from Winston & Strawn and King & Splading respectively.
The firm has also added more than 40 partners to its litigation practice over the past two years, Bloomberg reported, and focused on building up its finance and restructuring practices, including with the hire of an eight-partner finance team from Vinson & Elkins in Texas and a large finance and restructuring group on the East Coast from King & Spalding last year. That followed the firm’s mass hire of now-defunct Stroock & Stroock & Lavan’s restructuring team in New York in 2022.
The investments are adding to Paul Hastings’ top line, with the firm growing revenue 22% in fiscal 2024 to more than $2.2bn following 9% growth the year before. Meantime, Bloomberg reported the value of a partnership unit at the firm jumped 20% last year to $541k and is up by more than 80% over the last four years.
Schiele said he was looking forward to contributing to the firm’s momentum.
“Paul Hastings is becoming a true global powerhouse, in part by replicating a successful growth strategy across its platform,” he said. “The results are evident in the firm’s sustained upward trajectory in the market. My clients will benefit from the resulting synergies and complementary practices at the firm that can support their wide-ranging legal needs.”
A Kirkland spokesperson commented: “We thank Eric for his contributions to Kirkland, and wish him well in this next chapter of his career.”
Kirkland’s success in private equity and dealmaking has propelled it to become the largest law firm in the world by revenue, pulling in $7.2bn in 2023. Last year it topped London Stock Exchange Group’s global M&A advisor rankings for the second year running after working on deals worth more than $448bn, with Paul Hastings not among the top 25 firms included in the list.
Kirkland also led on M&A involving US firms, working on deals worth more than $400bn – a figure that dwarfed Paul Hastings’ $76bn of deals. Nevertheless the firm jumped from 66th place in 2023 to rank 23rd last year.
Kirkland’s success has not made it immune to raids by rivals, particularly in London, where the firm has lost a string of partners to Paul Weiss over the past 18 months as the latter builds up a top-tier practice around private equity.
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