CVC shares its iShares deal with Cadwalader

Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP hired several high-profile private equity lawyers last year, an effort whose richest fruit to date is Geoffrey Levin's representation of CVC Capital Partners Ltd. on its $4.4 billion agreement to buy Barclays plc's exchange-traded-funds business, iShares, announced April 9. R. Ronald Hopkinson lured Levin to Cadwalader from Kirkland & Ellis LLP, where he'd been a partner since 1999. Levin helped represent CVC when it formed a $7.2 billion European fund in 2005 and two years later when it acquired Univar NV for $2.1 billion.

Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP was CVC's lead counsel on the Univar deal, and Sullivan & Cromwell LLP also worked on it. Sullivan M&A partners Alison Ressler and Eric Krautheimer and financing counterpart Neal McKnight took the lead in representing Barclays on the iShares sale. Sullivan also did the U.S. work on the British bank's failed effort to buy ABN Amro NV in 2007 and helped it acquire Lehman Brothers Inc.'s investment banking business last year. Guy Norman, a partner at Barclays counsel Clifford Chance LLP, also worked on the iShares sale, and Margery Neale of Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP handled mutual fund regulatory issues. Barclays used Brad Whitman, a Lehman alumnus and co-head of financial services M&A at Barclays Capital, for banking advice along with Lazard's Jeffrey Rosen, Jon Hack and Nicholas Millar.