December 6, 2010
THE RECORDER
By Petra Pasternak
SAN FRANCISCO – DLA Piper has bolstered its leveraged acquisitions bench with the addition of three private equity partners in its Chicago office.
David Lee, Robert Davis and Fred Blakeslee II started today.
The team, which hails from Mayer Brown’s Chicago office, handles global business transactions for private equity funds and public and private companies, with strong ties to Asia clients and markets.
DLA partner Steven Napolitano, who heads up the 80-lawyer U.S. private equity group from New York and Chicago, said he expects Lee’s team will work with DLA’s California attorneys on infrastructure and tech transactions. But the firm’s U.S. private equity clients are doing more and more cross-border work.
“I personally have clients doing a lot more work in China and Brazil,” Napolitano said. “And a lot of the growth in our practice has been in our ability to have not just one or two lawyers, but significant teams of lawyers being able to execute in China and Brazil and the U.K. and the European continent.”
Like most other lawyers, private equity practitioners took their punches during the downturn, but the practice began a modest recovery in 2009, and continues to trend upward at a stable clip, Napolitano said, making it easier to pick up lateral partners. “People don’t move when their business is down,” he said.
Lee, who spent about four years at Mayer Brown, said he’s interested in expanding his practice to South Korea. He said there are regulatory hurdles to overcome, but he expects DLA will be opening an office there. “DLA is organized as a U.S. entity and a U.K. entity,” Lee said. “They’re in a position where they could go into the Korea market because the free trade agreement between Korea and the EU has already been ratified.”
The Obama administration announced an updated U.S. trade agreement with South Korea last week. It awaits legislative approvals in both countries.