Eric Schiele is a partner in Cravath, Swaine & Moore LLP's Corporate Department. His practice primarily encompasses mergers and acquisitions and general corporate and board advisory work, including hedge fund activism, as well as capital markets transactions. Corporate clients that Mr. Schiele has represented include, among others, Time Warner, Time Inc., Turner Broadcasting, Kraft Foods, DreamWorks Animation, Johnson & Johnson, Big Lots, The Washington Post and IBM. Mr. Schiele has also regularly represented a number of financial institutions, including J.P. Morgan, Goldman, Sachs & Co. and Credit Suisse. His representative transactions include representing:
- Mondelez International, Inc. (formerly Kraft Foods Inc.) in its spin-off of its $30 billion North American grocery business, Kraft Foods Group, Inc.
- Time Warner on a number of acquisition, divestiture and capital markets transactions, including its spin-off of AOL, its spin-off of Time Warner Cable and its acquisition of 100% of truTV, as well as various debt capital markets transactions for aggregate proceeds of approximately $10 billion, and related debt tender offers
- DreamWorks Animation in its acquisition of Classic Media and in the formation of Oriental DreamWorks with China Media Capital and Shanghai Media Group
- Flagstone Reinsurance Holdings, S.A. in its sale to Validus Holdings, Ltd.
- Time Warner subsidiary companies in a number of acquisition and divestiture transactions, including Turner Broadcasting in its disposition of the Atlanta Braves and Time Inc. in its sale of its Parenting Group and Time4 Media businesses
- A collection of different companies in connection with merger and acquisition transactions in the pharmaceuticals industry, including Johnson & Johnson in its acquisition of Omrix Biopharmaceuticals, Millipore Corporation in its acquisition of Serologicals, Biovail Corporation in its financing in connection with its merger-of-equals with Valeant Pharmaceuticals and in its acquisition of the worldwide tetrabenazine business of Cambridge Labs
- Chevron Corporation in its contested acquisition of Unocal
- The Board of Directors of MCI in connection with the contested acquisition of MCI by Verizon
- Sprint in its merger with Nextel
Mr. Schiele has also represented a number of different clients in connection with non-public hedge fund activism defense situations.
Mr. Schiele has been recognized by The Legal 500 for his skill in the capital markets arena in 2011 and 2012.
Mr. Schiele was born in Columbus, Ohio. He received a B.A. summa cum laude from Ohio Wesleyan University in 1996 and a J.D. with Highest Honors from the University of Texas School of Law in 2000, where he was a member of the Chancellors honor society and an Associate Editor of the Texas Law Review.