About

A highly proactive individual with excellent interpersonal skills who prioritises building high levels of trust with business partners through face-to-face interactions, (one of his personal mantras being “email is evil”), Eric I. Cohen boasts an extremely impressive breadth and depth of experience in both US and international settings. An associate with Robinson Silverman Pearce Aronsohn & Berman (now Bryan Cave Leighton Paisner) from 1983 to 1992 and then a partner with the firm until the end of 1997 in the general corporate and corporate securities area, he amassed a wealth of experience and immense legal knowledge during this period, establishing himself among the top lawyers in the sector. This led to him taking up the senior vice president, secretary and general counsel position with Terex Corporation at the beginning of 1998, where he has consistently added value to the company ever since. Among the most prominent deals and transactions he has worked on, Cohen mentions that he led a successful hostile takeover bid for a German public company and successfully defended significant patent litigation with potential damages of over $50m. He also helped successfully terminate a merger with a Finnish public company after a hostile takeover bid from a Chinese company complicated proceedings. The merger was terminated without any breakup fee or litigation and the Chinese hostile takeover bid was warded off, showcasing Cohen’s ability to adapt to changing circumstances and achieve a positive result for the company despite adverse elements appearing. Among the advice he gives to other in-house lawyers, Cohen advises his aspiring colleagues to ‘be a business partner and trusted advisor to your CEO and management team – not just an academic lawyer – and always think about how what you do and say will look or be interpreted with 20/20 hindsight’.