The Hindenburg report has alleged that Gautam Adani-led offshore shell entities in tax havens were used to facilitate corruption, money laundering and taxpayer theft. 
The Hindenburg report has alleged that Gautam Adani-led offshore shell entities in tax havens were used to facilitate corruption, money laundering and taxpayer theft. Billionaire Gautam Adani, the head of the embattled Adani Group, has hired New York-based Wachtell Lipton Rosen Katz to fight allegations levelled by short-seller Hindenburg Research. According to a report in the Financial Times, Adani’s lawyers approached the Wachtell Lipton Rosen Katz firm, which was founded in 1965, for a solution after US short-seller Hindenburg Research report's accused the conglomerate of stock manipulation and accounting fraud by using shell firms over the course of decades.
The New York-based law firm, led by Herb Wachtell, Martin Lipton, Leonard Rosen, and George Katz, who worked together as lawyers at NYU, is famous for handling complex corporate governance cases. As per its website, the firm, which was founded on a 'handshake', claims to have experience in the fields of mergers and acquisitions, strategic investments, takeovers and takeover defence, shareholder activism, corporate and securities law, corporate governance, restructurings, enforcement actions, internal investigations, executive succession, and crisis management.
“We handle some of the largest, most complex, and demanding transactions in the US and around the world. We also handle significant white collar criminal investigations and other sensitive litigation matters and counsel boards of directors and senior management in the most sensitive situations,” the company said in its description on its website.
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According to the 2022 NLJ 500 ranking of firms based on size, compiled by the National Law Journal, Wachtell Lipton Rosen Katz has 288 attorneys and is ranked 152nd in the US.
In the 2022 Global 200 survey, Wachtell Lipton Rosen Katz was ranked as the 55th highest-grossing law firm in the world.
Wachtell’s practice and case studies
Wachtell Lipton has played a major role and represented some major financial institutions on their most consequential matters. Wachtell Lipton defended companies that were under attack by shareholder activists and advised numerous public companies, including AOL, Vulcan Materials, Clorox, Forest Laboratories, CVR Energy, Target, Motorola, Office Depot, Longs Drugs, Lionsgate and Convergys while responding to activist shareholders such as Carl Icahn, Pershing Square, and JANA Partners, and other hedge fund and corporate governance activists.
The firm has also represented the NYSE in connection with the exchange’s listing standards and corporate governance initiatives for listed companies. They have also advised company boards and management teams on sensitive issues like sustainability, ESG, and corporate purpose.
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Cases and famous litigations
Wachtell has played a crucial role in some of the high-profile matters in the last one decade, including litigation related to the tragic events of 9/11, and the US financial crisis.
In recent years, the firm exclusively handled the Twitter Inc-Elon Musk case, when the former management planned to sue the billionaire after he refused to complete the $44 billion acquisition in 2022.
Besides, Wachtell also represented Musk and Tesla Inc's case in a lawsuit brought up by Tesla shareholders over its $2.6 billion acquisition of solar panel maker SolarCity. Wachtell was a part of the legal team which assisted Musk to take Tesla private in 2018.
Some of the top cases represented by Wachtell Lipton Rosen Katz in the US
1. Prologis in its $26 billion proposal to acquire Duke Realty in an all-stock transaction
2. Broadcom in its $69 billion acquisition of VMware, $18.9 billion all-cash acquisition of CA Technologies and $10.7 billion acquisition of Symantec’s Enterprise Security business
3. CoreSite in its $10.1 billion acquisition by American Tower
4. Cimarex Energy in its $17 billion merger of equals with Cabot Oil & Gas
5. Discovery’s Independent Directors in the combination of Discovery with WarnerMedia through a Reverse Morris Trust transaction
6. Salesforce in its $27.7 billion acquisition of Slack
7. Huntington Bancshares in its $22 billion all-stock merger with TCF Financial
8. Uber Technologies in its $2.65 billion acquisition of Postmates
9 Pfizer in its $11.4 billion acquisition of Array BioPharma
10. United Technologies in the all-stock merger of equals of its Aerospace businesses with Raytheon Company
11. Hewlett Packard Enterprise in its $1.3 billion acquisition of Cray
12. El Paso Corporation in its $38 billion sale to Kinder Morgan
13. United Technologies in its $18.4 billion acquisition of Goodrich
14. Temple-Inland in its $3.7 billion sale to International Paper following a hostile tender offer by International Paper
15. Motorola Mobility Holdings in its $12.5 billion sale to Google
Some of the well-known overseas cases
1. Kansas City Southern in its $31 billion acquisition by Canadian Pacific Railway and its now terminated $33.6 billion acquisition by Canadian National Railway
2. Nielsen in its $16 billion acquisition by a consortium led by Evergreen Coast Capital, an affiliate of Elliott, and Brookfield
3. S&P Global in its $44 billion acquisition of IHS Markit
4. eBay in the $9.2 billion acquisition of its Classifieds business by Adevinta ASA
5. Allergan in its $83 billion acquisition by AbbVie
6. Pfizer in the $48 billion combination of Upjohn and Mylan
7. Thomson Reuters in the $27 billion sale of Refinitiv to the London Stock Exchange Group
8. Colgate-Palmolive Company in its $1.7 billion acquisition of Laboratoires Filorga Cosmetiques
9. Kellogg in the $1.3 billion sale of its cookies, fruit and fruit-flavored snacks, pie crusts, and ice cream cones businesses to Ferrero International S.A.
10. T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom in the $146 billion combination of T-Mobile and Sprint
11. Pfizer Inc. in its $160 billion agreed combination with Allergan plc
12. Airgas, Inc. in its $13.4 billion acquisition by Air Liquide S.A.
13. Visa Inc. in its €21.2 billion acquisition of Visa Europe Ltd.
14. Tim Hortons Inc. in its $12.2 billion combination with Burger King Worldwide, Inc.
15. Verizon Communications in its $130 billion acquisition of Vodafone Group Plc’s 45% interest in Verizon Wireless
16. Alibaba Group in restructuring its relationship with Yahoo! including monetizing and unwinding Yahoo!’s holdings in Alibaba
17. GlaxoSmithKline plc in its unsolicited offer for, and subsequent $3.6 billion acquisition of Human Genome Sciences
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