Charles M. Nathan retired from the partnership in December 2009. He was a member of the corporate department in Latham & Watkins’ New York office, Co-Chair of the firm’s Corporate Governance Task Force and former Global Co-Chair of the firm’s Mergers and Acquisitions Group. His practice focused on mergers and acquisitions, corporate counseling and corporate governance. Charles represented companies and financial advisors in significant, high-profile mergers and acquisitions. He worked on some of the largest domestic and global M&A transactions in the last few years, including Roche’s US$45 billion acquisition of the public’s minority stake in Genentech, InBev’s US$52 billion acquisition of Anheuser-Busch and LiveNation’s US$2.5 billion merger of equals with Ticketmaster Entertainment.
Prior to joining Latham & Watkins, Charles was a partner with Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson. Before resuming his legal career in 1995, he was a Managing Director and head of the Financial Institutions Mergers & Acquisitions practice at Smith Barney Inc., as well as Managing Director and co-head of domestic M&A at Salomon Brothers. Charles began his legal career at Cleary, Gottlieb, Steen & Hamilton in 1966. He became a partner of that firm in 1973.
Charles was for many years a co-chairman of the Annual Institute on Securities Regulation in Europe and the Annual Institute on Securities Regulation in the US. He has chaired or spoken at numerous other conferences and seminars in his capacity as a securities and M&A lawyer and investment banker.
Charles is the former Chair of the Securities Regulation Committee of The Association of the Bar of the City of New York, as well the former Chair of the Subcommittee on Business Combinations and Proxy Statements of the Committee on Federal Regulation of Securities of the Business Law Section of the American Bar Association. He is a Co-Chair of the American Bar Association Task Force on Shareholder Proposals.
Charles has authored various articles on M&A topics and is a frequent contributor to various legal publications. He is recognized among a small group of “personalities and institutions that shape the governance establishment” by The Deal. He is also ranked as a leading mergers and acquisitions attorney in the 2010 Chambers US legal guide. In 2011 Charles was selected as an honoree of the National Association of Corporate Directors Directorship 100.