Keeping Score

D.C. managing partners often spend a lot of time preaching about cross-marketing legal services without ever seeing the fruits of their labor materialize. But that wasn’t the case in Covington & Burling’s latest deal. The firm, which advised Portland, Ore.-based Oregon Steel Mills in its agreement to be bought by Russia-based Evraz Group for $2.3 billion, paired lawyers from its New York mergers and acquisitions practice with its D.C. regulatory counterparts.

Covington’s New York corporate partner J.D. Weinberg led the steel-mill team with D.C. partner Michael Francese in employment benefits, and regulatory partners David Marchick, Peter Flanagan, and Linda Morgan assisted on the deal. Covington D.C. tax partner George Chester Jr. and environmental partner Corinne Goldstein also worked the deal.

“There are lots of deals that are generated in the corporate department in D.C.,” says Weinberg. “When deals are generated in New York, typically we reach out to regulatory lawyers in Washington.” Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton New York partners William Groll and Neil Whoriskey worked this acquisition, the largest ever by a Russian company in the United States, for Evraz Group.

Cleary Gottlieb’s D.C. office also assisted on the regulatory side of the deal with partners Mark Leddy, David Gelfand, Paul Marquardt, and counsel W. Richard Bidstrup. Washington associate Jeremy Calsyn was the point person on the antitrust analysis for Cleary Gottlieb.

Dow Lohnes’ D.C. office represented a private equity consortium, led by Thomas H. Lee Partners and Bain Capital, in its winning $26.7 billion bid for radio giant Clear Channel Communications Inc., which owns more than 1,000 radio stations across the country. The private equity group will acquire Clear Channel for $18.7 billion plus the assumption of approximately $8 billion of the company’s debt, making it one of the largest leveraged buyouts in history.

The Dow Lohnes team included partners Leonard Baxt, John Feore, John Byrnes, John Logan, Michael Basile, and Raymond Bender and associate Robert Folliard. The deal remains subject to regulatory and shareholder consents. Baxt says the firm’s principal role was advising the consortium on securing approval for the deal from the Federal Communications Commission; approval could take another 8-12 months.

Boston-based Ropes & Gray, longtime counsel to Thomas H. Lee Partners, also advised the consortium. Meanwhile, Texas-based Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld advised Clear Channel in the deal. Akin Gump’s multioffice team included two D.C.-based partners, Tom Davidson and Paul Hewitt.