Greenberg Traurig partner and mergers and acquisitions expert Daniel Serota is joining Sidley Austin's New York office as a partner in the firm's M&A practice, Sidley announced Wednesday.
Serota specializes in private equity and high-stakes M&A work, counseling clients in complex auctions, hostile offers, mergers, stock and asset purchases, joint ventures and bankruptcy transactions. Clients have included Amazon.com Inc. and Microsoft Corp.
"I'm really excited about the opportunity here to grow using Sidley's global platform," said Serota, who began his career 16 years ago as an associate at Sullivan & Cromwell. "[I] think it's going to be a great fit for me to help serve clients that I worked with in the past and to expand to new ones."
Serota said he was drawn to Sidley partly because of shared clients and because of the Chicago-based firm's strong intellectual property and regulatory practices.
"I do a lot of deals with tech, life science and retail and health care [companies]," Serota said. "Drawing off Sidley's strength in those areas was really appealing to me."
"What I'm really looking to do is to be able to expand the breadth of what I'm doing and to be able to take on more challenging roles," he added.
After joining Sullivan & Cromwell in 2001, Serota became special counsel at the firm in 2010. He departed a year later for Linklaters' New York office, where he spent nearly two years as counsel before joining Greenberg in 2013 in its corporate and securities practice.
"[Serota's] arrival marks the continuation of our ongoing efforts to expand Sidley's global M&A and private equity offerings, and we are delighted to welcome him to the firm," said Michael Schmidtberger, managing partner of Sidley's New York office, in a statement.
Serota tapped recruiter Mark Rosen, chair of recruiting firm Mark Bruce International, for his move.