Nicolai Schwarz-Gondek
USC Gould School of Law

Nicolai M. Schwarz-Gondek is a partner in the Century City office of Sidley Austin LLP where his practice focuses on private equity, mergers and acquisitions, and other complex corporate transactions. Schwarz-Gondek regularly represents private equity sponsors, family offices and other institutional investors in connection with mergers, stock and asset acquisitions and divestitures, and leveraged and management buyouts. Schwarz-Gondek also advises target and acquiring companies (including the portfolio companies of private equity firms) on a broad range of merger and acquisition transactions. At USC Gould School of Law, Schwarz-Gondek teaches contract drafting, analysis and negotiation as a lecturer in law.

Before joining Sidley Austin LLP, Schwarz-Gondek was a partner in the private equity and M&A practice groups of O’Melveny & Myers LLP in Century City. Prior thereto, Schwarz-Gondek was a shareholder in the corporate practice group of Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth, PC, in Santa Monica and practiced in the corporate department of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in Los Angeles and in the mergers and acquisitions and public company advisory groups of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP in New York.

Schwarz-Gondek holds a Master of Laws (LLM) from USC Gould School of Law, where he graduated first in his class, and received a Doctor Iuris (PhD equivalent), summa cum laude, from the University of Augsburg with a doctoral thesis on German tax law. Schwarz-Gondek is also a graduate of Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich where he completed his First State Examination (JD equivalent) and obtained his Diplom-Jurist (Univ.), specializing in the areas of business and corporate law. In addition, Schwarz-Gondek spent one year as a visiting scholar at the University of Geneva in Switzerland with a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service.

FACULTY IN THE NEWS

Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance
September 25, 2023
Re: Jonathan Barnett

Jonathan Barnett wrote an op-ed piece, based on his forthcoming paper to be published in the University of Chicago Business Law Review, about antitrust regulations and the effects it has on merger review processes. "This inquiry raises serious concerns that legislators and regulators have embarked on a course of action that has an insufficient factual foundation in the digital markets on which competition policymakers have focused," Barnett wrote.

RECENT SCHOLARSHIP

Jonathan Barnett
August, 2023

"Killer Acquisitions Reexamined: Economic Hyperbole in the Age of Populist Antitrust," University of Chicago Business Law Review.

Robin Craig
August, 2023

Robin Craig's article, "The Regulatory Shifting Baseline Syndrome: Vaccines, Generational Amnesia, and the Shifting Perception of Risk in Public Law Regimes," 21 Yale Journal of Health Policy, Law, and Ethics 1-60 (July 2022), was featured in The Regulatory Review on August 31, 2023.

Edward McCaffery
August, 2023

"The Paradox of Taxing the Rich," Florida Tax Review (Forthcoming, Fall 2023).