August 6, 2007

THE DAILY JOURNAL

By Rebecca U. Cho

In a bid to expand the firm’s private equity buyout capabilities in San Francisco, Morrison & Foerster has hired private equity partner Eric McCrath, formerly a partner at Kirkland & Ellis.

McCrath, 35, who speaks Japanese and has international experience representing private equity firms investing in East and South Asia, said Morrison & Foerster’s well-developed Far East presence was a draw.

“Kirkland & Ellis had less of an East Asian international experience and expertise,” McCrath said. “Morrison & Foerster is definitely the proverbial 800-pound gorilla in Tokyo. You put all that together with my own experience and background in East Asia, and that’s a very natural dove-tailing with my career path.”

The firm has well-established offices in Tokyo, Hong Kong, Beijing, Shanghai and Singapore. The Hong Kong office was founded 30 years ago, and the Tokyo office 20 years ago.

Robert Townsend, chairman of Morrison & Foerster’s global corporate group, said the firm wants to hire more private equity attorneys, especially in San Francisco, where it hopes to better serve Bay Area clients with private equity funds in Asia.

“The funds from here are increasingly looking at Asia as the next area of opportunity for them, so we want to get to know them here first,” Townsend said.

He said his firm was eyeing McCrath for six months.

“We had as a strategic plan decided to expand our private equity buyout practice,” Townsend said. “Eric comes from a firm very well-known in that area, so he was a target.”

McCrath represents large- and middle-market private equity firms in acquisitions of domestic and international companies. This year, he represented Golden Gate Capital in its purchase of clothing chain Express, formerly a division of Limited Brands Inc. He also worked on Weston Presidio’s 2007 acquisition of Jimmy John’s Gourmet Sandwich Shops.

McCrath chose not to disclose the clients he will bring to the firm.

Before going into law, he worked as a corporate finance consultant in Tokyo with accounting firm Arthur Andersen. He graduated from Columbia University Law School in 2000 and joined Cravath, Swaine & Moore in New York. He joined Kirkland & Ellis’ San Francisco office in 2005.

The addition of McCrath brings to five the number of attorneys in the San Francisco office working specifically on private equity buyouts within the corporate practice group. The firm employs a thousand lawyers in 18 offices, with 350 attorneys in San Francisco.

Kirkland & Ellis, a 1,300-attorney firm with 85 practitioners in San Francisco, also has offices in Los Angeles, New York, Chicago, Washington, D.C., London, Munich and Hong Kong.