Stealing the headlines with its July 2011 merger with litigation specialist M Seligman & Co, the newly christened Goldfarb Seligman & Co is now the largest law firm in Israel, exceeding it's antecedent, Herzog Fox & Neeman, in numbers of fee earners. Although the move will not have a huge impact on the firm's corporate or financial practices, apart from in respect of additional lawyers, it is seen as an astute one that will expand the firm's capabilities....
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Stealing the headlines with its July 2011 merger with litigation specialist M Seligman & Co, the newly christened Goldfarb Seligman & Co is now the largest law firm in Israel, exceeding it's antecedent, Herzog Fox & Neeman, in numbers of fee earners. Although the move will not have a huge impact on the firm's corporate or financial practices, apart from in respect of additional lawyers, it is seen as an astute one that will expand the firm's capabilities. "It's really going to assist them on the litigation front. Seligman is a very good litigation firm, I think it's a wonderful merger in terms of the logic because they were lacking skills in that area so I think it's a very smart move."
For peers, Ashok Chandrasekhar is the outstanding lawyer at the firm. "Ashok is a strong player that we enjoy working with, and opposite to. He's in the top four we would point to in the country," is one M&A lawyer's response to a query over who the country's leading practitioners are. Another corporate lawyer concurs, explaining: "I like to work with Goldfarb, Ashok is a very good lawyer."
The corporate area is the firm's particular forte and it has secured plenty of mandates in the last 12 months. The firm has demonstrated its prowess in the ever popular Israeli technology sector acting on deals with several household names. It advised key client Google on the company's first acquisition in Israel when it purchased Mentorwave Technologies and similarly target company Snaptu,on its acquisition by Facebook.
Also on the sell side, the firm worked across from another major internet brand, provider AOL, which acquired the firm's client 5 Minute for $65 million.
Israeli corporate lawyers observe more interest from Asia in Israeli companies during the past 12 months and the firm's largest M&A transaction was advising Koor Industries on selling it's controlling interest in Makteshim Agan to the China National Chemical Company for $2.4 billion.
On the project finance side, partner Amit Krispin has had a hand in all the firm's recent work but his most substantial deal was advising on the $1.25 billion financing of Dorad energy's 840MW power plant. The partner has also been active for photovoltaic panel manufacturer Sunpower on achieving financing for three separate power plant projects.
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