Practice Areas & Industries: Akerman Senterfitt

Practice/Industry Group Overview

Akerman Senterfitt has over 50 corporate lawyers throughout Florida who devote a substantial portion of their practice to representing clients involved in mergers, sales, and divestitures. We have handled more transactions than any other law firm in Florida.

Since 1995, we have been involved in well over $10 billion worth of mergers and acquisitions. In addition to a few high profile mergers that were worth over $1 billion each, we have successfully negotiated and closed well over 500 deals, including mergers, stock and asset purchases, recapitalizations, and spin-offs, ranging from $20 million to $500 million in value.

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We regularly represent private equity funds as well as public and private consolidators in the acquisition of platform and tuck-in companies. Among other notable consolidators, we have represented Wayne Huizenga in his public and private ventures since 1985, including as lead counsel in the acquisition programs of Blockbuster Entertainment (video stores), AutoNation (car dealers, car rental companies, electronic security monitoring services), Republic Services (solid waste landfills and collection services), Boca Resorts (luxury resorts), and Huizenga Holdings (pro sports teams, private service companies), among others. In other industries, we have served in recent years as acquisition counsel to Steiner Leisure (day spas), General Roofing Services (roofing contractors), Medical Manager (software distributors), Structured Intelligence (Latin American IT consultants and systems integrators), Kellstrom Industries (aviation suppliers), U.S. Office Products (office suppliers), Printsource (commercial printers) and U.S. Road Services (towing and auto hauling).

We handle negotiated and hostile takeovers, buy-outs by financial and strategic buyers, as well as leveraged management buy-outs sponsored by private equity funds or other financing sources. Some of the recent going private transactions we have handled include Sheridan Healthcare, Ecometry Corporation, and THT Corp. In addition, we frequently are brought in by other law firms to serve as special counsel to represent Boards of Directors and special committees of Florida corporations in going private, related party, and other unorthodox transactions.

A substantial amount of our transactional work is international. We have over 25 corporate lawyers who are bilingual or trilingual, and who have extensive experience representing public and private acquirers of companies throughout Latin America. Our in-house Brazilian and International lawyers and consultants as well as our extensive network of local counsel throughout Latin America and the Caribbean, give us an advantage over international law firms which have small, and limited, local offices in Latin America. Our results in this area have led to our representation of General Motors, Ivax Corporation and other multinationals in their investments throughout Latin America. Recently, we completed a $395 million cross-border cash tender offer of a Chilean company which was listed on both the Santiago and New York Stock Exchanges. For more information about this area, click on "International" in the right hand margin of this page.

Our extensive transactional practice requires that we utilize the skills of attorneys in many areas of law. To this end, we work closely with attorneys in our tax, employee benefits, labor & employment, real estate, environmental, litigation, and intellectual property practices. Several specialists in these other practice areas devote their time almost exclusively to support of our mergers and acquisition practice.

The Corporate Practice Group at Akerman Senterfitt has the size, experience, and reputation to successfully manage an intensive acquisition program for any public or private consolidator, as well as the most sophisticated or troublesome individual acquisition or sale transaction.

Clients:
AutoNation, Inc. , Orius Corp. , Homeland Support Services, Inc. , Naviant Inc. , The Wackenhut Corporation , Answerthink, Inc. , Esavio Corporation , Lovell Farms , Kemper Insurance Companies , Boca Resorts, Inc. , Security Technologies Holding Corporation , Dade Paper & Bag Co. , Thales Group , Republic Services, Inc. , Steiner Leisure Limited , AutoNation, Inc. , Applied Digital Solutions , Brockway Moran & Partners , General Roofing Services, Inc. , Semtor, Inc. , Medical Manager Corporation , PrintSource USA, Inc. , G. Neil Companies, Inc. , Mechanical Services, Inc. of Orlando, Bush Industries, Inc.