Private Equity
A trusted partner to financial sponsors.
With decades of sponsor-focused experience, our lawyers provide comprehensive representation to our private equity fund and family office clients. We are focused on middle-market deals across industries and emphasize efficiency, responsiveness, and a commercial mindset.
Perkins Coie’s Private Equity team delivers high-value, comprehensive support for our clients. We approach mergers and acquisition transactions with a project management perspective, addressing challenges and balancing competing interests to achieve optimal results. Our lawyers are experienced in all types of private equity transactions, from industry roll-ups and carveouts to co-investments and secondaries to leveraged buyouts of private and public companies.
Our professionals represent investors at all stages of the investment cycle, from new acquisitions and follow-on investments to exits through sale, leveraged recaps or initial public offerings. Where necessary, we also represent investors in restructuring investments.
How we help clients
- Comprehensive private equity counsel
- Investment and exit transactions
- Portfolio company representation
- Fund formation and advisory
Our Team
Perkins Coie provides private equity clients legal solutions in portfolio management, fund formation, acquisitions, IP, and investor negotiations.
Portfolio Company Representation
Utilizing a whole-firm approach, we regularly represent our private equity clients' portfolio companies in connection with a wide variety of matters, including:
- Add-on acquisitions and roll-ups to expand industry platforms.
- Environmental matters.
- IP issues, including licensing agreements and patent prosecution.
- Option and bonus plans, management compensation and employment agreements, and labor and employment issues.
- Real estate matters, including sale-leaseback transactions, construction projects, and debt financing
- Joint ventures and outsourcing arrangements.
Fund Formation and Advisory
Perkins Coie assists clients in all areas of fund formation and structuring, offerings and operations, as well as critical decisions regarding clawback obligations, management fee structures, and limited partner commitment workouts. Clients trust us with:
- Structuring partnerships, limited liability companies, and other entities for fund operations and management.
- Advising and assisting funds for qualification as Small Business Investment Companies.
- Preparing offering terms and documents and negotiating terms with investors.
- Addressing tax, securities, and investment company issues in structuring the entities.
- Structuring for bank regulatory, foreign, and other unique investor issues.
- Advising fund management regarding compensation, equity, employment, and governance issues.