Justin A. Santarosa 

Justin A. Santarosa has been a leader in mergers and acquisitions in the cannabis industry for five years, but as this sector is slowing down, his career has been heating up in the energy and defense arena.

“I started off doing banking, and through our banking clients, they had an interest in cannabis,” Santarosa explained. “Now there is an overlap of cannabis facilities that need solar because energy costs so much.”

Last year, he led Duane Morris’ legal team in a series of multimillion-dollar cannabis deals, including three acquisitions for top California retailer Harborside: retailer Urban Leaf, cultivator Loudpack, and manufacturer Sublime for a total of $170 million. This created a new company called StateHouse, the largest vertically integrated cannabis platform in California with control over cultivation, manufacturing, processing and sales.

He also closed a $30 million cash sale of BioTrack, a cannabis software company.

“I find it exciting to be in the room with the c-suite people and the bankers and learn a lot about these different companies so I can better advise them,” Santarosa said. “You learn a lot about what keeps them up at night. With that knowledge, we can do a better job about structuring the transactions and minimizing the risk.”

One of those was the acquisition of Blue Raven Solar by SunPower Corp., a leading solar technology company, for $165 million. From there, he launched into representing The Partner Companies, a holding company for specialty manufacturing in aerospace and defense, including components of the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter.

Much of his work deals with entities overseas, so Santarosa finds himself making phone calls to China or the UK in the middle of the night while managing each country’s own set of complex laws.

“Especially in China, there are more required approvals,” he said. “There are a lot more structuring issues involved.”

While making deals is fun, it’s also stressful work because even a minor mistake can cost the client a lot of money.

“There is a lot at risk,” Santarosa said. “If the deal goes bad and has a liability we didn’t cover, it costs the client tens of millions of dollars. It’s very high pressure. There are a lot of times things need to happen quickly and you have to be able to think quickly and act quickly and give solid advice.”

–Tori Richards