Nicolai Schwarz-Gondek
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.