Sidley Austin LLP advises private equity sponsors, sovereign wealth funds and institutional investors on large-cap buyouts, take-privates, minority investments and sponsor exits across a broad range of sectors. All sat at the head of the practice are Chicago-based Sean Carney and Perry Shwachman, who are both the resident insurance experts; Mehdi Khodadad, who is an expert at representing technology and life sciences companies in the Century City office; Scott Parel, who advises private equity sponsors, pension funds and corporate clients from the Dallas office; and New York-based Jonathan Kelly, who is acitve in the insurance and financial services sectors, and Brien Wassner, who represents sponsors and their portfolio companies across the full transaction lifecycle. Former Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP co-head David Perkins joined the firm in August 2025.
Legal 500 Editorial commentary
Testimonials
Collated independently by Legal 500 research team.
- ‘Brien Wassner. I have worked with him for many years and when I move or he move organizations, he will always be the lawyer I work with for all my M&A transactions. Despite his seniority, he stays very actively involved regardless of size of transaction. He is highly responsive to needs, and very creative and practical when it comes to coming up with solutions in complex situations. He has consistently delivered high quality work for us.’
- ‘Sidley is very strong in M&A and has good depth of subject matter experts across IP, employment, litigation etc which they pull into every transaction. They are responsive and deliver a high quality of work.’
Key clients
- Affinity Partners
- American Industrial Partners
- Ancala Partners LLC
- APG Asset Management N.V.
- Apollo Capital Management, L.P
- Ares Management
- Athora Holding Ltd.
- Bain Capital
- BDT & MSD Partners
- Brand Velocity Group
- Carlyle
- Clearlake Capital Group, LP
Work highlights
Representing Affinity Partners as part of an investor consortium, along with PIF and Silver Lake, in an all-cash acquisition of Electronic Arts Inc., a global leader in digital interactive entertainment, with an enterprise value of approximately US$55 billion.
Representing GIC in connection with the US$18.3 billion take-private acquisition of Hologic, Inc., a medical diagnostics and imaging company specializing in women’s health.
Representing Clearlake Capital’s US$7.7 billion take-private acquisition of Dun & Bradstreet Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: DNB), a global provider of business decisioning data and analytics.
Practice head
Perry Shwachman; Mehdi Khodadad; Sean Carney; Jonathan Kelly; Scott Parel; Brien Wassner
Other key lawyers
David Perkins