Benefitting from a large, nationwide office presence, Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP handles a range of large-scale IPOs, investment grade, and Rule 144A offerings. Gregory Astrachan in New York, Edward Best, who works out of both Chicago and New York and Cristopher Greer in New York lead a team whose capacity to deal with private equity sponsors at every stage of a transaction stands out. Indeed, team members are a popular point of contact for foreign issuers in capital-raising transactions and pre-capitalized securities (P-Caps) transactions on the sponsor side, but also the underwriter side. John Ablan is adept in securities law and acts in a range of domestic and cross-border high-yield capital markets transactions. Christopher Forrester joined the team in February 2026 from A&O Shearman.
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Key clients
- Hyundai Capital America
- Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce
- Saks Global Holdings LLC
- Xerox Corp
- Reinsurance Group of America
- Platinum Equity and Butterfly
- Platinum Equity and its portfolio company Solenis
- McGraw Hill, Inc.
- Ingram Micro Holding Corporation
- Karman Holding Inc.
- Take-Two Interactive Software
- Sharkninja
- 1RT Acquisition Corp.
- Karman Holdings
- Yorktown Energy Partners
- RBC Capital Markets
- Fidelis Insurance Holdings Limited
- U.S. Bank National Association
- Grid Dynamics
Work highlights
Assisted Karman Holdings Inc. with its $506 million IPO, a significant upsizing, Karman and the selling shareholders sold 23 million shares for $22 each after marketing the shares for $18 to $20 each, valuing the company at nearly $3 billion at the time of closing.
Acted for the initial purchasers in a historic pre-capitalized securities (P-Caps) transaction, acting as structuring counsel to the initial purchasers in an offering of $12 billion of an innovative structure of P-Caps by a Luxembourg special purpose vehicle.
Represented Saks Global in a high-yield acquisition financing of Neiman Marcus Group.
Practice head
Gregory Astrachan; Edward Best; Cristopher Greer; Christopher Forrester
Other key lawyers
John Ablan