Five Latham & Watkins Partners Named Among Law360's 2013 MVP Honorees

Five Latham & Watkins partners – Gary Axelrod, Richard Bress, Mark Gerstein, Douglas Lumish and Sean Wheeler – have been named among the annual Law360 MVPs for recent accomplishments and notable legal work in the hospitality, appellate, M&A, intellectual property and energy practice areas, respectively. The MVP awards honor lawyers for their “exemplary work on critical litigation, mammoth deals and first-of-their-kind global matters,” according to Law360.

• Appellate: Richard Bress, a litigation partner in the Washington, D.C. office, focuses on appellate and Supreme Court litigation. His 2013 wins included a high profile challenge to New York City’s so-called “big soda ban.” The victory was no anomaly. Bress has argued scores of appellate cases, including eight in the Supreme Court, and he recently notched big-ticket victories for Clear Channel, Monsanto and Omnicom, among others. 
• Energy: Sean Wheeler, a corporate partner in the Houston office and Co-chair of the firm’s Oil & Gas industry group, focuses on securities offerings and M&A matters for companies in the energy industry, including master limited partnerships. In the past year, Wheeler advised on eight completed energy-related IPOs, and is one of the nation’s leaders for issuer’s counsel for energy-related IPOs by deal count in 2013. 
• Hospitality: Gary Axelrod, a finance partner in the Chicago office and Co-chair of the firm’s Hospitality, Gaming & Leisure industry group, focuses on complex business transactions representing owners and operators in connection with the sale, acquisition, development, financing, ownership and management of hotel, resort and gaming properties. He has worked on some of the largest transactions in the hospitality industry with an estimated combined deal value of over $3 billion in 2013 alone.
• Intellectual Property: Douglas Lumish, a litigation partner in the Silicon Valley office, is widely recognized nationally as a leading patent trial attorney. He recently won two major cases in 2013 – a jury verdict in a hard-fought patent jury trial for client TransPerfect, and affirmance by the appeals court of an earlier patent jury trial win achieved for Google and YouTube in the Eastern District of Texas.
• M&A: Mark Gerstein, a corporate partner in the Chicago and New York offices and a Global Chair of the firm’s M&A Practice Group, focuses on M&A matters, both in the US and globally, corporate governance, activism and proxy contests and takeover defense planning. He led deal teams advising on some of the largest M&A transactions of 2013, including Omnicom’s landmark $35.1 billion merger with Publicis and Koch Industries’ $7.5 billion acquisition of Molex Corporation.