Trevor S. Norwitz

Education

Trevor S. Norwitz

Trevor Norwitz is a partner in the Corporate Department at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz where he focuses primarily on mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance and securities law matters.  He has advised a range of public and private entities in a variety of industries in connection with mergers, acquisitions, divestitures, hostile takeover bids and defenses, proxy contests, joint ventures, financing transactions and corporate governance matters.

Selected recent representations by Mr. Norwitz include:  S&P Global in its $44 billion merger with IHS Markit, for which he was named a Dealmaker of the Year by American Lawyer magazine (and previously in the separation of McGraw Hill Education, its joint venture with CME Group to form S&P/Dow Jones Indices, and several acquisitions); AerojetRocketdyne in its sale to L3Harris; Whole Foods in its sale to Amazon.com and its response to shareholder activism; Medivation in its sale to Pfizer; Dollar Tree in its contested acquisition of Family Dollar Stores; eBay in connection with a proxy contest by Carl Icahn, and its spinoff of PayPal, Inc.; Creative Artists Agency LLP in connection with its restructuring and sale of a controlling interest to TPG Group;  and numerous transactions for AT&T, Ventas, Novartis and Danaher Corporation.

Mr. Norwitz teaches a course in Mergers and Acquisitions at Columbia University School of Law.  He is a former chair of the New York City Bar Committee on Mergers and Acquisitions and Corporate Control Contests, is active on committees of the International Bar Association and the American Bar Association, and a member of the American Law Institute, and served as a member of an international advisory group to the South African government on company law reform.  A regular speaker and panelist at professional conferences, he has chaired and participated in numerous continuing legal education programs and contributes regularly to professional publications on topics relating to M&A and corporate governance.  Mr. Norwitz also chairs Friends of Ikamva Labantu, and serves on the boards of other non-profit organizations, including DirectWomen and the Bernstein Institute of Human Rights at NYU Law School. He chaired the University of Cape Town Fund from 2003 to 2023.

Born in Cape Town, South Africa, Mr. Norwitz received his Bachelor of Business Science with first class honors from the University of Cape Town in 1986.  On a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University, he read law at Keble College, graduating with first class honors in 1989, and then completed an LL.M. at Columbia University in 1990.  He joined the firm in 1994 and was named partner in 1998.

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