Biography: Mergers and Acquisitions

A partner in the corporate department since 1992, David Lakhdhir has particular expertise in cross-border mergers, acquisitions and strategic joint ventures. He has been resident in the firm's London office since 2002.

In recent years, Mr Lakhdhir has acted for a variety of European and Asian companies in acquiring US companies in both public and private transactions, including in the manufacturing, software, electronics, financial services and insurance industries. He has advised on major cross-border acquisitions in the financial services, hospitality, telecommunications, power, entertainment, educational services, outsourcing, internet and media sectors. An adviser to several leading US private equity funds since the late 1980s, in recent years Mr Lakhdhir has acted for several prominent private equity funds active in Europe, as well as for European funds acquiring or investing in US companies. He has also advised on the creation of several large-scale international joint ventures involving combinations of companies from the United States, Europe, Japan, Korea, India and Turkey.

From 1993 to 1997, Mr Lakhdhir served as partner-in-charge of the firm's Tokyo office. His representations during this period included the establishment of the Universal Studios theme park in Osaka; the deleveraging and revitalisation of the Doosan Group (a Korean business conglomerate) through a series of M&A transactions; several bank mega-mergers; and over US$10 billion of equity, hybrid capital and debt offerings for several of Japan's largest banks. Mr Lakhdhir has remained active in Japanese corporate transactions, most recently advising Citigroup on its M&A transactions involving Nikko Cordial Corporation.

After joining Paul, Weiss in 1984, Mr Lakhdhir initially focused primarily on US merger and acquisition transactions, including a series of innovative leveraged buy-outs and several hostile takeovers, and was profiled as a so-called "merger whiz kid" in a 1986 Wall Street Journal article.

Mr Lakhdhir is the chair of the Asian advisory committee of Human Rights Watch. Mr Lakhdhir was the chair of the international law committee of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York from 1999 to 2001, and secretary and member of the foreign and comparative law committee in the late 1980s. In 1983 to 1984, he was a visiting scholar at the Indian Law Institute in New Delhi.