Biography: Mergers and Acquisitions

Michael Hollingsworth, managing partner of Nelson Mullins' Atlanta office, is co-head of the firm's mergers and acquisitions group. Mr Hollingsworth focuses on middle-market corporate transactions, including mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, and joint ventures. He also represents a variety of private equity and hedge funds relative to their formation, operations and investments. His industry experience includes consumer-branded products, health-care, construction and aggregates, technology and telecommunications, media, manufacturing and distribution, and business services. Mr Hollingsworth is also one of the transactional partners in the firm's multidisciplinary national health-care practice group and is a member of the American Health Lawyers Association.

Prior to joining the firm in 2006, Mr Hollingsworth was a partner at Kilpatrick Stockton (now Kilpatrick Townsend & Stockton), an Atlanta-based AmLaw 100 firm. In 2005, Mr Hollingsworth founded the Southeastern M&A Forum which is one of the leading M&A conferences in the Southeast. He is an active member of the Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) and the ABA's mergers and acquisitions committee. Chambers & Partners recognises him as a leader in corporate/M&A and notes that he "continues to make a name for himself as a highly skilled expert in midmarket M&A transactions" and interviewees report that "he is excellent for any core M&A matters". Mr Hollingsworth earned his JD, magna cum laude, in 1996 from Samford University's Cumberland School of Law, and an LLM in taxation in 1999 from the University of Alabama School of Law. He received his undergraduate degree in political science from Tulane University.