ACE
Apollo Management, L.P.
Banc of America Securities LLC
Bank of America, N.A.
Caxton-Iseman Capital
CCMP Capital Advisors, LLC
Century Indemnity
Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.
Credit Suisse First Boston
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Coller Capital
Deutsche Bank
Emdeon Corporation
Eos Capital Partners
Evercore Partners
ExxonMobil Corporation
Ford Motor Company
GEICO
Goldman, Sachs & Co.
Hexion Specialty Chemicals, Inc.
Houlihan, Lokey, Howard & Zukin
ICV Capital Partners
Insight Venture Partners
International Game Technology
Jean Coutu Group (PJC) Inc.
JER Partners
J.K. Rowling
J.P. Morgan Partners
Lincoln Electric Company
Lionel LLC
MatlinPatterson Global Advisers
Mercury Interactive
Morgan Stanley
New York Public Library
News Corporation
NYSE Group, Inc.
Palladium Equity Partners
Quest Diagnostics Inc.
Robertson Stephens, Inc.
Sigma Corporation of America
Sirna Therapeutics
Time Warner Inc.
Tishman Speyer
Trader Joe’s
Twentieth Century Fox
UBS Securities LLC
United Health Group
Univision Communications Inc.
US Airways Group, Inc.
Verizon Communications
Zurich
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New York
An international law firm is judged by its strength in key business and financial centers, and none is more important than its New York presence. More than 200-lawyers strong, O’Melveny’s Times Square office provides a talented team of litigators and dealmakers who exemplify the wealth of experience, the sophistication, and the client focus for which the Firm is known.
Our New York litigators regularly represent major investment banks and corporations in high-stakes securities and IP litigation as well as in other “bet-the-company” cases. From our counseling of prominent private equity firms and public and private corporations to our handling of sophisticated mergers, divestitures, securities offerings, financings, and restructurings for large financial institutions and major corporations, O’Melveny represents clients in their most important domestic and international transactions. Collectively, we comprise an integrated and growing response team skilled in, and focused on, the legal and business issues that define commerce in the principal business capital of the Western Hemisphere.
Key Facts
- Chambers USA (2008) recognizes our New York banking and finance, environmental, intellectual property, media and entertainment, and mergers and acquisitions practices, stating that:
- In the area of Banking and Finance: Acquisition Finance, “in addition to its high-profile financial sponsors clientele, the firm is often found representing major lenders in large leveraged acquisition transactions, including the whole spectrum of complex financings including mezzanine, high-yield and securitizations.”
- "The international dimension" of our Environmental practice "cannot be underestimated."
- Our Intellectual Property practice "is a major force in trademark and copyright matters."
- With “cutting-edge litigators” on our Media and Entertainment team, we are “a force to be reckoned with” in the copyright arena.
- Our Corporate M&A practice is “super-accessible and with a broad command of corporate affairs,” and our lawyers are "willing to go the extra mile” for our clients.
- O’Melveny lawyers in New York are invested in their community. In 2007, the New York State Bar Association recognized 28 O’Melveny lawyers as "Empire State Counsel," members who provided at least 50 hours of free legal services to the poor in 2006. We are one of only eight law firms with 10 or more lawyers qualifying for the title. In 2006 and 2007, several New York attorneys received pro bono awards from community organizations; four of our lawyers received The Legal Aid Society’s Pro Bono award for their exceptional legal services to low-income New Yorkers, and three New York attorneys received awards from Immigration Equality for pro bono work on asylum cases.
- The O’Melveny Scholarship Program is a key component of our local community service work. Each year we name 15 eleventh-grade students from five New York City public high schools as O’Melveny Scholars. Since the program’s inception in 2003, we have awarded $650,000 in college scholarships. We play an active role in these high schools, including our lawyers’ participation in a recently implemented mentoring program.
Related Services
- Antitrust and Competition
We have distinguished ourselves in all aspects of antitrust–from winning an acquittal in the first criminal prosecution of a wholly-foreign alleged price-fixing agreement, to taking transactions through the antitrust agencies on a daily basis, to successfully defending companies in private litigation. We have represented the largest corporations in civil litigation, both class actions and individual plaintiff cases. Our clients range from the financial services industry to the oil industry. We pride ourselves on being among the handful of top firms with the necessary courtroom experience to try these complex antitrust cases successfully. O’Melveny’s New York lawyers also represent clients before antitrust and competition agencies worldwide, and have extensive experience coordinating the global pre-merger review of complex international mergers and obtaining clearance in challenging situations.
- Business Tax
O’Melveny is one of the few international law firms with US, UK, and Chinese tax capabilities. In New York, we regularly counsel on corporate finance, mergers and acquisitions, and private equity transactions, and have substantial experience in executive compensation and employee benefits law, as well as employment arrangements for our corporate clients. Representative clients include Apollo Management, L.P., Insight Venture Partners, JP Morgan Partners, ONCAP Management Partners, and Palladium Equity Partners. Recent illustrative transactions include advising Apollo in its US$1.25 billion acquisition of Jacuzzi Brands, Inc.; JPMP in acquiring a significant ownership interest in QCE Holding, LLC, the parent of the Quiznos restaurant chain; and SeamlessWeb Professional Solutions in its sale to ARAMARK Corporation.
- Class Actions, Mass Torts, and Aggregated Litigation
Our practice is interdisciplinary, encompassing antitrust, employment discrimination, environmental, ERISA/health care, finance/insurance, product liability, and securities law. Our New York office has substantial experience in insurance coverage litigation involving various kinds of claims for coverage, including environmental pollution, asbestos, toxic torts, products liability, professional liability, and directors and officers liability. We have represented manufacturers and contractors in more than 10,000 asbestos-related personal injury actions, as well as investment banks involved in evaluating toxic tort claims against public companies in the United States and internationally. Our team has represented GEICO in multiple matters, including the first-ever attempt to certify a class action alleging violations of New York’s No-Fault Law.
- Capital Markets
- Electronic Discovery and Document Retention
O’Melveny offers a dedicated Electronic Discovery and Document Retention practice–with over 35 lawyers in New York, California, and Washington, D.C.–and we have the depth of experience to provide our clients with cost-effective and strategic advice in this rapidly changing field. Our New York team is experienced in drafting and implementing document retention plans, identifying the duty to preserve in a multitude of circumstances, using discovery offensively, and managing massive document reviews. We are also well-versed in cost recovery, attorney-client privilege protection, and engaging forensic experts, and are knowledgeable with the most advanced collection and search methods. Our team works with other practice groups on the Firm’s largest litigation matters and also counsels our clients in the pre-litigation context, working with in-house lawyers, information technology, and records management personnel to design effective document retention and destruction practices.
- Environmental Law and Natural Resources
Our New York team provides global transactional diligence and documentation support with expertise in virtually every industrial, commercial, and real estate sector, including consideration of emerging worldwide regulatory issues such as greenhouse gas restrictions. We have a unique capability in integrating our litigation and enforcement knowledge into transactional diligence, and conducting due diligence reviews involving large-scale industrial commercial transactions for private equity clients. For example, we provided regulatory and litigation diligence for Caxton-Iseman during its acquisition of specialty gas distributor Valley National Gases Incorporated. Other representative clients include Apollo Management, L.P., American Capital Strategies, CCMP (formerly JP Morgan), and The Jean Coutu Group. Litigation experience includes serving as national coordinating and lead counsel at superfund sites, including Combe Fill South Landfill NPL, and working on New York and New Jersey port litigations and transactions involving unique regulatory requirements on diesel emissions.
- White Collar Defense and Corporate Investigations
- Insurance and Reinsurance
Our New York team provides litigation, arbitration, and transactional services to such notable clients as ACE, CIGNA, GEICO, MunichRe, and Zurich, and handles significant disputes involving insurance coverage company practices, regulatory issues, ERISA issues, reinsurance claims, mutual funds, securities, and criminal defense. In the aftermath of September 11th, we represented Zurich in a jury trial involving a disputed coverage claim filed by Silverstein Properties Inc. over US$1.13 billion in coverage for the World Trade Center; we scored a major victory for ACE and CIGNA in their decade-long battle over CIGNA’s restructuring; and recently won a significant trial victory for Century Indemnity against Congoleum Corporation in a major asbestos case.
- Intellectual Property and Technology
We represent an array of clients in copyright and trademark matters, including infringement claims, Internet-specific issues, and breach-of-contract issues, before federal and state courts nationwide as well as before the TTAB and in private arbitration proceedings. We have both brought and defended against claims for injunctive relief, and have represented clients on appeal in both federal and state courts. Our team is also well-versed in representing clients during the pre-litigation phase, handling IP-related matters in the transactional context, conducting due diligence for M&A transactions, and negotiating and drafting trademark and copyright license agreements. Among many other high-profile engagements, our New York lawyers: obtained summary judgment on behalf of J.K. Rowling dismissing copyright and trademark infringement claims with respect to the book series Harry Potter, and an award of sanctions against the plaintiff for fabricating evidence; won an intellectual property and contract case on behalf of the Martha Graham Dance Center in which the Center was pitted against the heir to Martha Graham’s estate; and represented Lionel Trains in favorable settlement agreements and trademark licenses with the Union Pacific Railroad. Other notable New York clients include Twentieth Century Fox, News Corporation, the New York Post, New York Public Library, and HarperCollins.
- International Arbitration
O’Melveny’s New York lawyers are experienced mediators whose international perspective and familiarity with various legal systems and rules has been gained by representing clients before arbitral tribunals throughout the world. Illustrative successes include representing a major food distributor in an arbitration arising out of the 2001 sale of its Honduran beer and soft drink brewer and distributor to one of the world’s leading brewers; obtaining a no coverage obligation award, and a cost award in our client’s favor, for a major insurance company in a four-week arbitration in London; and obtaining awards in favor of an international hotel chain in parallel ICC and ad hoc arbitrations in Panama involving the company's local business activities, which were governed by Panamanian and U.S. law.
- Investment Funds
O’Melveny’s Investment Funds and Securitization practice is focused on the key areas of law affecting investment funds, including corporate law, partnership law, tax, ERISA, and U.S. and non-U.S. securities laws. Our New York office represents clients such as CCMP Capital, Insight Venture Partners, Reliant Equity Partners, and RLJ Equity Partners. We have represented CCMP Capital and its predecessor (JP Morgan Partners) in over US$10 billion of fundraising activities over the past ten years, including CCMP Capital Investors II, a US$3.4 billion buyout/growth equity fund, and its related US$1 billion "synthetic secondary" fund. Our team regularly represents Insight Venture Partners - a leading private equity firm focused on the growth-stage software, software-enabled services, and Internet industries, and was selected to serve as Insight's fund counsel in connection with Insight's latest private equity fund, Insight Venture Partners VI, which closed in May 2007 with capital commitments of approximately US$1.25 billion.
- Labor and Employment
Regularly counseling public and private employers on all aspects of labor and employment relations, our team has extensive experience regarding issues facing employers in a variety of industries, including airlines, financial services, manufacturing, and entertainment. While we regularly litigate in state and federal court, much of our work is preventive or advisory in nature, with the goal of minimizing or eliminating the employer's exposure to liability and litigation. We advise on union organizing and corporate campaigns, restructuring, and collective bargaining obligations. We are regularly engaged in internal investigations and handle all phases of dispute resolution , including class actions , employment discrimination, wage and hour, ERISA, employee benefits, labor arbitrations, and labor reorganizations under bankruptcy law. Representative clients include Atlas Air, Bear Stearns, Cintas, Citigroup, Korn/Ferry, Sigma, Trader Joe's, UBS, US Airways, and many others.
- Mergers and Acquisitions
Experienced in guiding sophisticated companies and financial investors through the complexities of merging, acquiring, and disposing of publicly-traded or private businesses, our many clients–including Apollo Management, L.P., Emdeon Corporation, Honeywell International, and NYSE Group, Inc.–entrust our New York team with their most important transactions. Representative 2007 transactions include representing Apollo Management and its portfolio company Hexion Specialty chemicals in their US$10.6 billion acquisition of Huntsman Corporation; Goodman Global, Inc. in its US$2.65 billion acquisition by Hellman & Friedman LLC; and JER Partners in both its US$2 billion acquisition of Highland Hospitality Corporation and its US$1.7 billion acquisition of Genesis HealthCare Corporation.
- Restructuring
- Securities Enforcement
- Securities Litigation
O’Melveny’s experienced New York team is well-versed in counseling all defendant constituencies, and has successfully defended securities class actions, derivative lawsuits, criminal securities proceedings brought by the Department of Justice, and enforcement actions by the SEC, NASD, and NYSE. Among our many successes, we recently secured voluntary dismissal with prejudice of a US$4.6 billion RICO action that Biovail Corp., Canada's largest generic drug manufacturer, brought against Banc of America Securities, stemming from its former analyst's coverage of Biovail. As part of the settlement, Biovail agreed to pay certain of the Banc's attorneys' fees, a practically unprecedented step for a plaintiff settling its claims. We continue to represent the Banc in a related 10b-5 class action brought by Biovail's shareholders. Our team is well equipped to handle increasingly complex securities matters in both civil and criminal contexts, as our partners include a former Chief of the Securities and Commodities Task Force in the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York; a former Deputy Chief of the Criminal Division of the US Attorney’s Office for the Southern District of New York; and a former Senior Associate Regional Director for Enforcement in the SEC’s Northeast Regional Office.
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Times Square Tower
7 Times Square
New York, NY 10036
United States of America
Phone +1-212-326-2000
Fax +1-212-326-2061
Local Weather
Local Time: 7:42 PM
Local Date: 1/6/2009
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