Eric M. Krautheimer

Krautheimer’s list of big deals includes many superlatives.

In the telecommunications sector, Krautheimer represented AT&T Inc. in the $1.43 billion sale of its minority stake in Hulu back to the streaming video joint venture. The April 2019 transaction valued Hulu at $15 billion, with AT&T’s interest valued at $1.43 billion.

A year earlier, he co-led the S&C team representing longtime client AT&T in its acquisition of Time Warner Inc. for about $108.7 billion. Through that transaction, AT&T got its interest in Hulu as well as Time Warner’s net debt.

The proceeds from the Hulu sale will help retire $30 billion of the remaining debt from the acquisition and free resources for new ventures in the streaming services industry, Krautheimer said.

“The challenges in structuring an intricate deal are the best part of the job for me,” he added. “There’s a lot of freedom to be creative in a collaborative sense.”

Following Krautheimer’s representation of Bayer in its announced acquisition of Monsanto for $66 million—the largest ever M&A transaction by a German company—Bayer made further moves. In October 2017 and April 2018 Bayer, still advised by Krautheimer, signed agreements to divest for $9 billion selected crop science assets to BASF. The deal allowed Bayer to obtain regulatory clearance for the Monsanto acquisition. The BASF sale was the largest ever divestiture ordered in connection with a merger. The Bayer-Monsanto deal closed in June 2018.

“I’ve been very lucky to work on great deals, large and small,” Krautheimer said.

Krautheimer was with the S&C team that represented Kite Pharma Inc. in its $11.9 billion sale to Gilead Sciences Inc. For Gilead, which develops and commercializes therapeutics, it was the largest-ever buy. Santa Monica-based Kite Pharma, which develops cancer immunotherapies, was a publicly held clinical-stage biopharma at a critical point in its history when the deal was announced. It was preparing for FDA approval and the launch of Yescarta, a treatment for non-Hodgkin lymphoma.

The challenge was hammering out the M&A details without distracting Kite from its progress with the drug. An unsuccessful or cumbersome deal would destabilize the company and negatively impact its momentum.

“Everybody wanted to see this deal get done and signed rapidly, given the stage of the product,” Krautheimer said. “As a group, we were able to deliver.”

— John Roemer