Profile: Barnet Phillips IV

Corporate Tax

Biography: Corporate Tax

Barnet Phillips IV is a partner in Skadden's tax practice and heads the firm's real estate investment trust group. He represents clients on a broad range of tax matters, including mergers and acquisitions, bankruptcy reorganisations, corporate restructurings, spin-offs and investment funds. He has extensive experience structuring mergers and acquisitions, and partnerships, including master limited, syndicated real estate partnerships and private equity funds, and exchange funds.

For more than 30 years, Mr Phillips has been actively involved in all aspects of REITs, public and private, including organisations and formations, mergers and acquisitions, dispositions, liquidations, conversions and initial and secondary public offerings. Mr Phillips participated in the formation of some of the first umbrella partnership REITs and their public offerings, including Manufactured Home Communities, Equity Residential and Equity Office Properties.

In recent years, Mr Phillips has structured numerous significant transactions, including Centro Watt, a joint venture between Centro Properties Group and Watt Commercial Properties, in its US$3.2 billion acquisition of Heritage Property Investment Trust; BlackRock's US$9.5 billion acquisition of Merrill Lynch's asset management business; the liquidation of Long-Term Capital Management; the Petrie Stores/Toys R Us reorganisation; and the sale of Nicholas-Applegate Capital Management to Allianz AG.

He is a frequent lecturer and author on tax and REIT issues and counsels charitable organisations. Mr Phillips is listed in Chambers Global: The World's Leading Lawyers and Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business, with Chambers USA 2007 designating him as being in the top tier nationwide among REIT attorneys. He also was selected for inclusion in the Best Lawyers in America 2008 for tax law.