Bio

A partner in the Corporate Department, Robert Kindler is Global Chair of the M&A Group. He focuses his practice on counseling public and private companies, executives and their boards on mergers and acquisitions and other significant corporate transactions. Clients also rely on Rob’s decades of experience in takeover defense, proxy contests and other corporate governance matters. Most recently, he was Vice Chairman, Global Head of M&A and a member of the Management Committee at Morgan Stanley. Rob is one of the top M&A dealmakers in the United States and has been advising companies on market-leading transactions for over 40 years as both a lawyer and an investment banker. Throughout his career, Rob has advised on the largest, most groundbreaking M&A deals, including Comcast in its $72 billion acquisition of AT&T Broadband; Time Warner Cable in its $78.7 billion acquisition by Charter Communications; Dow Chemical Company in its $130 billion merger with E.I. du Pont de Nemours and Co.; Time Warner in its $85.4 billion acquisition by AT&T; Bristol-Myers Squibb Company in its $74 billion acquisition of Celgene; EMC Corporation in its $67 billion acquisition by Denali Holding (now known as Dell Technologies); IHS Markit in its $44 billion sale to S&P Global; Nextel in its $42 billion merger with Sprint; Viacom in its $40 billion merger with CBS Corporation; Norfolk Southern Corp. in its successful defense against a nearly $30 billion takeover bid by Canadian Pacific Railway; Sanofi-Aventis in its successful $20.1 billion takeover of Genzyme; Lucent in its $18 billion sale to Alcatel; Time in its $15.2 billion merger with Warner Communications and its successful defense against Paramount’s $10.7 billion hostile bid; Qwest Communications in its $10.6 billion sale to Centurylink; Continental Airlines in its $8.5 billion merger with United Airlines; CBS in its $5.8 billion acquisition by Westinghouse; CF Industries in successful hostile defense against $5.4 billion bid by Agrium and in its successful hostile $4.7 billion bid for Terra Industries; and Dreamworks in its formation and $4 billion spin-off of Dreamworks Animation. Rob has also successfully defended companies including Agrium, Akamai, Barnes & Noble, Cummins, General Motors and Transocean against activist shareholders. Rob also advised Morgan Stanley in all of its landmark strategic transactions during his tenure, including in its $10 billion investment by MUFG during the financial crisis, the spin-off of Discover Financial Services and the acquisitions of Smith Barney, Solium Capital, E*Trade and Eaton Vance.