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• Core M&A
• » Private Equity
• International Mergers & Acquisitions
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• See Also:
• Investment Management/
  Private Equity Funds

Davis Polk's private equity practice is among the world's best. Our private equity lawyers assist financial institutions and private equity groups in making acquisitions and dispositions for their own accounts and for the accounts of funds that they sponsor. Our experience covers the entire private equity spectrum, including fund formation and marketing, structuring and making equity investments, negotiating bridge, high-yield and senior debt financing for portfolio companies, structuring management compensation programs, making follow-on investments, executing recapitalization transactions, disposing of investments through private or public sales, making in-kind distributions and negotiating workouts.

Our clients include funds organized by JPMorgan Chase, the private equity operations of Morgan Stanley (including MSDW Private Equity, Morgan Stanley Real Estate Fund and Princes Gate) and the merchant banking funds of CSFB/DLJ. We also advise fund sponsors that are not affiliated with large financial institutions, such as Francisco Partners, Greenhill Capital Partners, Investor AB, Soros Fund Management, Thomas Weisel and Welsh, Carson, Anderson & Stowe.

• Davis Polk ranked among the top law firms in global private equity deals announced in 2007, according to Bloomberg.
• “This ‘exceptionally capable firm’ is highly regarded as a genuine ‘full-service shop,’ and impresses clients with its ‘seemingly limitless depth of expertise,’ which covers all areas of buyout transactions and venture capital financings.“ Chambers Global (2007).

• We advised SLM Corporation, commonly known as Sallie Mae, the leading provider of saving- and paying-for-college programs in the United States, in connection with the unsuccessful proposed $25 billion acquisition of Sallie Mae by an investor group led by J.C. Flowers & Co.
• We advised AIG Financial Products in connection with the proposed $22 billion management-led buyout of Kinder Morgan, a large, Texas-based energy transportation, storage and distribution company.
• We advised CVS, as part of a consortium that also includes SUPERVALU and Cerberus, in the $9.6 billion purchase of Albertson’s, as well as CVS’s follow-on $4 billion acquisition of Albertson’s drug store business. Based in Rhode Island, CVS is the largest retail pharmacy in the United States. Albertson’s is an Idaho-based supermarket chain.
• We advised Baron Asset Fund, the Baron Growth Fund and the Baron Partners Fund as a co-investor in the $6.3 billion acquisition of Nuveen Investments, a Chicago-based provider of diversified investment services to institutional and high-net-worth investors, by a consortium of investors led by Madison Dearborn Partners, a Chicago-based equity investment firm.
• We advised Morgan Stanley in connection with a $5.5 billion investment by China Investment Corporation (CIC), the Chinese government’s investment company, in Morgan Stanley.