Practice Areas & Industries: Parker Poe Adams & Bernstein LLP

Practice/Industry Group Overview

We offer clients a wealth of experience across a broad range of business combinations and related activities. Our group includes more than 30 attorneys who work regularly with public and private companies for whom acquisitions and divestitures are a major strategic focus, as well as financial and entrepreneurial buyers and sellers of businesses.

As part of the firm's substantial international business practice, our attorneys regularly counsel non-U.S. clients who seek to enter or expand their presence in the U.S. market through acquisitions, as well as U.S. companies acquiring or selling businesses overseas.

Our transactional attorneys work with clients in a number of industries, including automotive, equipment rentals, financial services, food services, franchising, health care, information technology, insurance, retail, steel, telecommunications, textiles and home furnishings.

Services Available

We have the experience needed to guide business combinations successfully from structuring through negotiation and closing. In particular, we provide seasoned legal advice and services related to:

• Auction-type divestitures, from both the seller and bidder perspectives
• Leveraged acqusitions and related financing, including senior debt, mezzanine funding and equity financing
• Tender offers, proxy contests and other change of control techniques
• Client roll-up and build-up strategies, including techniques for the efficient and cost-effective completion of a high volume of industry-specific acquisitions
• Alternatives to traditional M&A transactions, including joint ventures, strategic alliances, consortiums and cross-licensing agreements
• Going private transactions, management buyouts and other divestitures implicating the fiduciary responsibilities of officers and of directors (including special committees)
• Acquisitions involving insolvent or distressed companies
• Other aspects of business combinations, including tax planning, legal due diligence investigations, drafting and negotiating transaction documents and obtaining antitrust and other regulatory clearances

We work closely with Parker Poe attorneys in related practice areas, such as tax, antitrust, international business, intellectual property, environmental, employment, employee benefits, health care, information technology, securities and insurance coverage. In collaboration with our clients' in-house counsel, accountants, investment bankers and other advisors, we are able to ensure an effective and cost-efficient completion of transactions.