Rita-Anne O’Neill

O’Neill, who serves as co-head of Sullivan & Cromwell’s Global Private Equity Practice, advises high-profile equity firms and corporate clients on mergers and acquisitions, security offerings and corporate disclosure and governance.

She particularly enjoys the challenge of working on deals that have added complexities.

For example, she recently advised private equity firm Ares Management in the $2.9 billion agreement to acquire Cincinnati Bell with Macquarie Infrastructure and Real Assets (MIRA). The agreement came after a multi-round bidding war between MIRA/Ares and Brookfield Infrastructure, resulting in the termination of Cincinnati Bell’s previous merger agreement with Brookfield.

“The deal was a take-private, with a pretty complicated co-investment structure, paired with a very interesting bidding dynamic,” O’Neill said. “We were the interloper in an existing agreement, and we went two or three rounds of topping bids.”

She also advised longtime client Lion Capital in its “stalking horse” purchase agreement to acquire the assets of its portfolio company John Varvatos Enterprises. Menswear retailer John Varvatos was already facing financial difficulties before the pandemic forced its stores to close. The company filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy as part of a plan to sell itself to Lion affiliate Lion Hendrix Cayman Ltd.

“Here, we were interacting with a bankruptcy element, so there was an overlay of the court process in the deal,” she said. “So while it was a normal asset purchase, like any other M&A deal, we also had this bankruptcy process, and we were interacting with a whole other team in the firm going before the court.”

An influential figure in the M&A field, O’Neill has an interest in advancing women in the legal profession, but specifically in M&A. She serves as the co-chair of the Tulane Corporate Institute, which organizes the most influential M&A conference in the United States. She is co-chair of the ABA’s Women in M&A Subcommittee, which promotes the recruiting, retention and promotion of women lawyers in M&A. She also co-founded a national Women in M&A Networking Initiative.

“If you look at BigLaw, especially at the partner level, there are much fewer women than men. But if you focus in on M&A, the numbers are exacerbated,” O’Neill said.

Her work with the various organizations has looked at the problem holistically, starting with educating women law and business students about careers in M&A, programs to train and retain women in the field, and opportunities for high-level M&A professionals to connect.

— Jennifer Chung Klam