Latham & Watkins has bolstered its corporate practice by elevating an experienced transactional lawyer to its partnership.
Erika Weinberg, who had held the position of counsel, is now a partner in the corporate department in Latham’s New York office. She is one of six counsel newly promoted to partner at the firm. Weinberg advises investment banks and issuers in debt and equity offerings and helps clients undertake acquisition financings. Her expertise covers bridge lending, tender offers, consent solicitations, and restructurings, and other areas. Weinberg has counted Goldman Sachs, Citigroup Global Markets, Barclays Capital, Credit Suisse, Morgan Stanley, and Merrill Lynch among her clients. Many of the companies she works with are active in the technology, manufacturing, media, healthcare, and retail sectors.
In a discussion with IFLR1000, Weinberg said that what originally attracted her to Latham and makes it the right platform for her today is the firm’s expertise in high-yield.
“There were really just a handful of firms and Latham was at the top of the list. Historically, this firm’s roots in New York are based on representing Drexel Burnham, which was a huge player in the high-yield market in the 1980s. Latham’s innovation in this space was something I very much wanted to be a part of,” Weinberg remarked.
Weinberg observed that in the capital markets realm, the generators of business are the sponsors, namely entities like Blackstone, KKR, and Apollo, which go and buy companies and need financing for such acquisitions.
“When they do those deals, it’s a competitive process, putting one bank against another, so they need different teams, and so a lot of these law firms are trying to build their bench,” she said. “A lot of the private equity firms are raising new funds, they’ve got capital they have to put to work, they have to buy companies, and we assist lenders in providing financing.”
“Driven by all of these private equity firms in the middle of the fundraising process, people think there will be a spate of acquisition financings where the loan market, the high-yield market, or the equity market will depend on what’s happening in the world at the time. The market is fickle. I think people have learned to be very fluid on how they do their transactions, which can start as a high-yield deal and turn into a loan pretty quickly,” she commented.