North America - United States • Finance

Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP

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Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP has a reputation for advising on landmark and highly-complex debt offerings, including those linked to acquisitions and spin-off transactions. The wide-ranging practice covers  investment grade, high-yield, convertible and exchangeable debt deals, with the team acting for issuers and underwriters. Ryan Patrone and Kelly Smercina were recently elected to the partnership, expanding the capital markets team’s senior ranks. It frequently advised blue-chip issuers along with the most active underwriters and initial purchasers in big-ticket offerings. Craig Arcella, Andrew Pitts and Nicholas Dorsey are top members of the team, with Michael Mariani making a further impression in investment grade debt offerings. William Fogg and Stephen Burns are also senior members of the practice. Named individuals are all based in New York.    

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Key clients

  • AerCap
  • Booking
  • Burlington Northern Santa Fe
  • Crown Castle
  • IBM
  • Illumina
  • Kenvue
  • Nestlé
  • Northrop Grumman
  • Qualcomm
  • Weyerhaeuser

Work highlights

  • Represented the underwriters in fivenotes offerings of JPMorgan Chase aggregating $15.25bn.
  • Represented Kenvue in its $7.75bn notes offering in connection with its separation from Johnson & Johnson.
  • Represented the underwriters in the $3.25bn notes offering of L3Harris Technologies to finance its acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne.

Lawyers

Hall of Fame

The lawyers at the very top of the profession, widely known and respected by peers and clients for their longstanding involvement in market-leading work.

Craig Arcella

Hall of fameCravath, Swaine & Moore LLP

Craig F. Arcella is a partner in Cravath’s Corporate Department and serves as Co-Head of the Finance Practice. Mr. Arcella represents financial institutions and corporate clients in a wide variety of matters, including investment grade, high‑yield and convertible bond offerings; liability management transactions; initial public offerings and other equity financings; syndicated loan and other leveraged finance transactions; and mergers and acquisitions. He also regularly advises companies with respect to governance, public disclosure and other corporate matters.

Leading lawyers

Andrew Pitts

Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP

Andrew J. Pitts is a partner in Cravath’s Corporate Department and serves as Head of the Firm’s Capital Markets Practice for North America. He has a significant corporate finance practice and advises clients on a broad range of corporate issues. Mr. Pitts is widely regarded in the legal community as exceptionally responsive and pragmatic with a wide range of experience addressing clients’ most complex legal issues.

Next Generation Partners

Nicholas Dorsey

Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP

Nicholas A. Dorsey is a partner in Cravath’s Corporate Department. His practice primarily focuses on representing corporate issuers and borrowers, and financial institutions, lenders and other parties, in public and private offerings of securities, loan transactions and other financing transactions. He also represents companies in mergers and acquisitions and regularly advises clients in connection with public disclosure and corporate matters. Clients regularly seek Mr. Dorsey’s counsel for the practical, commercial advice he offers with respect to their most challenging matters.

Practice head

The lawyer(s) leading their teams.

Craig Arcella, William Fogg, Andrew Pitts

Other key lawyers

Ryan Patrone, Kelly Smercina, Nicholas Dorsey, Stephen Burns