Mark I. Greene is a partner in Cravath's Corporate Department and serves as the Leader of its International Practice and as Chair of the Firm's Business Development Group. His practice focuses on mergers and acquisitions, corporate governance and securities matters, including advising on cross-border transactions, private equity deals, complex restructuring transactions, proxy fights, takeover defense and global securities offerings.
Mr. Greene has been repeatedly recognized as one of the country's leading practitioners in the mergers and acquisitions area by, among others, Chambers USA: America's Leading Lawyers for Business from 2007 through 2012; Chambers Global: The World's Leading Lawyers for Business in 2011; The Legal 500 in 2011 and 2012; IFLR1000: The Guide to the World's Leading Financial Law Firms in 2008, 2009 and 2013; and PLC Which Lawyer? He was recognized by The Legal 500 in 2008 and 2009 for his work in private equity buyouts. Mr. Greene was also named by Lawdragon 500 Leading Dealmakers in America in 2007 and by Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America in 2007, 2009/2010 and 2011. For the five-year period from 2006 to 2010, he was recognized as the second most valuable M&A lawyer in Germany by Welt am Sonntag. He was also ranked fifth in 2006 European M&A by Legal Week magazine.
Mr. Greene counts among his diverse client base Unilever, KPN, Novartis, Saint Gobain, Schneider Electric, The Linde Group, Amdocs, Mylan and Stanley Black & Decker.
Notable transactions include representing: the special committee of the board of directors of CNH Global N.V. in a pending merger between Fiat Industrial S.p.A. and CNH Global; the Linde Group in its US$4.6 billion acquisition of Lincare Holdings Inc.; Unilever in connection with numerous M&A transactions including the US$700 million pending sale of its global Skippy business to Hormel Foods; Deutsche Boerse AG in its proposed US$9.53 billion merger of equals with NYSE Euronext and the competing unsolicited proposal by Nasdaq OMX and Intercontinental Exchange, which was withdrawn; Mylan Inc. in its €4.9 billion acquisition of the generic drug operations of Merck KGaA of Germany; Novartis AG in its US$5.5 billion sale of its Gerber business to Nestlé S.A.; Schneider Electric S.A. in its US$6.1 billion acquisition of American Power Conversion Corporation; and The Stanley Works in its US$4.5 billion acquisition of The Black & Decker Corporation.
Mr. Greene serves on the Trustee Council of Cornell University and is an Adjunct Professor of Law at Cornell Law School, where he teaches a course on Mergers and Acquisitions. He is also a Trustee of the Randall's Island Sports Foundation in New York City, serves on the Board of Advisors of the Institute for Law and Economics at the University of Pennsylvania and is a member of the Board of Trustees of The Allen-Stevenson School in New York City. Mr. Greene is Contributing Editor of Getting the Deal Through: Securities Finance 2012, an overview of regulation in 24 jurisdictions worldwide. Additionally, he co-authored Corporate Law in Germany (2nd edition), an overview of the major principles of German corporate law, and the U.S. section of The Mergers and Acquisitions Review.
Mr. Greene received a B.A. from Cornell University in 1989 and a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1993. After a clerkship with Hon. Charles Legge of the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California, he joined Cravath in 1994 and became a partner in 2001.