Business Law

Successful businesses competing in the global economy require experienced, broad-based and bold legal counsel to protect and grow their assets.  Greenberg Glusker’s attorneys advise clients in all aspects of their business operations. 

We counsel organizations and individuals, ranging from start-up ventures and middle market businesses, to larger, public and privately-held multinational corporations.

Our clients operate in nearly all sectors of the economy, and our representation meets their evolving needs. In venture and business financing, we counsel investors providing start-up and later-stage financing.  We negotiate complex compensation packages for senior-level executives. And we advise celebrities granting third parties the right to use and exploit their brands in various commercial ventures. 

A point of pride for our Business Group is the precision and insight we apply when addressing our clients’ business problems.  Our attorneys quickly identify the principal risks or issues at hand and offer timely, creative and practical solutions.  This helps ensure that the chosen course of action is implemented in a timely and cost-effective manner. 

As outside counsel for our business clients, we provide a range of advice as expansive and sophisticated as the issues that our clients face.  We frequently analyze the appropriate form of entity, or structure of entities, appropriate for our clients' businesses. Considerations of tax goals, investment criteria and business risks all inform our recommendations.

We represent clients in structuring and negotiating the terms of complex debt and equity financing transactions.  To further assist clients in growing and strengthening their businesses, we counsel on opportunistic mergers and/or stock or asset acquisitions.

As trusted legal counselors to business owners, our Business Group lawyers provide a wealth of experience on business operations issues.  We advise clients on concerns related to employees, strategic alliances or ventures with third parties, and contractual arrangements with suppliers, distributors and other people conducting business with them. 

For many of our clients, their businesses intertwine with estate plans, succession wishes, and tax strategies.  Maximizing the effectiveness of all these plans requires strategic coordination.  Our Business Group, Taxation Group and Estate Planning Group work in concert to realize the most advantageous tax results.  Tax counsel is also important to the structuring and negotiating of the terms of the sale or other disposition of a client’s business.

Our attorneys provide clients with a breadth of business legal expertise and knowledge most commonly associated with mega-size law firms. Where Greenberg Glusker excels at serving clients is in our best-of-both-worlds approach - big firm quality and capabilities combined with the client-focused attentiveness and responsiveness of easy-to-access lawyers.

Representative Experience

  • Ongoing representation of one of the largest privately-held landscape services companies in the United States in connection with a series of strategic asset and stock acquisitions of regional landscape construction and landscape maintenance businesses. Purchases range from $3 million to $45 million.
  • Ongoing representation of an investment trust focused on alternative energy companies and other clean tech industries.  Counsel includes structuring, negotiating and documenting private investment in public companies (PIPE) transactions and numerous investments in venture-stage companies, ranging from start-ups to late-round financings. Representation also includes preparing and managing the trust’s U.S. securities filing obligations and coordinating similar international filing obligations.
  • Represented a publicly-held operator of high-end health and fitness clubs in selling selected clubs that operated primarily in the East to one of the operator’s shareholders for $80 million. As part of the sale, we also represented the company in refinancing $50 million of real estate-secured debt.
  • Represented a privately-held internet video streaming company in a sale to a large, publicly-held media company for $52 million.
  • Represented a privately-held financial software developer in a sale to a publicly-held financial services company.  The deal involved a combination of cash and securities valued at approximately $30 million.
  • Represented a shopping center developer in connection with the sale of its 50-percent membership interest in a Culver City shopping center to the other 50-percent owner for approximately $40 million.
  • Represented a principal shareholder of a privately-held credit card processing company who sold her equity stake to another existing shareholder for $140 million.
  • Ongoing representation of Olympic gold medalist and World Champion boxer Oscar De La Hoya and Golden Boy Promotions, his boxing promotion company, in a variety of matters, including strategic partnering with a major sports and entertainment congolmerate and grants of equity interests to certain key executives and boxers.
  • Represented a sports icon in acquiring an equity interest in, and finalizing a multi-year contract to serve as head coach of, an NHL hockey team, and in dozens of endorsement and licensing arrangements with companies as varied as Anheuser-Busch, Ford, McDonald’s and Pepsi.
  • Represented an Emmy-award winning actress in connection with a number of endorsement, licensing and branding opportunities in which her name, image and likeness were used to promote the sale of different types of products, from skin care to home furnishings and apparel.
  • Represented a privately-held food distribution company in acquiring selected operating divisions of Heinz Food for an aggregate consideration exceeding $10 million.
  • Ongoing representation of a syndicator of apartment projects in a series of equity raises for acquisitions of apartment projects in Southern California aggregating approximately $350 million.
  • Ongoing representation of Roland Corporation, one of the largest manufacturers and distributors of musical instruments, in structuring its credit and security transactions with retail dealers and financing companies.

For more information, please contact Jill A. Cossman, Chair of Greenberg Glusker's Business Group.