Gary I. Horowitz is a Partner at Simpson Thacher & Bartlett LLP in the Firm’s Corporate Department and a member of the Firm’s Executive Committee. He concentrates on mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and corporate finance matters. He represents private equity firms as well as public and private companies. He regularly advises public corporations and appears before their boards of directors with respect to general corporate, disclosure and governance matters. Four of his industry specialties are asset management, insurance, media and pharmaceuticals.
He represents Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Co., CVC Partners, Sterling Partners, Grosvenor Capital, The Carlyle Group, Yahoo!, Ameriprise, Aquiline Capital, Reservoir Capital, The Phoenix Companies, Axis Financial, Dillard’s and the major underwriters.
Gary’s deals have included KKR’s pending acquisition of KKR Financial; Yahoo’s purchase of Tumblr; The Carlyle Group’s acquisition of a controlling stake in multiple hedge funds, including Claren Road; AIG’s sale of its Japanese life business, Star-Edison, to Prudential; KKR’s acquisition of First Data; LPL Holdings’ sale to Texas Pacific Group; the sale by UBS of its Brazilian asset manager, Pactual, to BTG and the sale of Barr Labs to Teva.
He has acted as underwriters’ and issuers’ counsel in initial public offerings in the financial services sector including IPOs for Axis Financial, Aspen, Validus, Symetra and Assurant, and in follow-on equity and debt offerings for them and others.
Gary is one of only seven lawyers ranked in Band 1 of Chambers’ listing of U.S. private equity buyout lawyers and was recently recognized in Private Equity Manager’s 2013 “The Legal Power 30” as one of the top 10 private equity lawyers in the U.S. market. Gary was also recognized in the areas of mergers and acquisitions and insurance transactions, where clients described him as “a terrific lawyer” and note that he has “evolved from being a young star to having a wonderful, high-level practice.” Chambers added that he “has earned the respect of the market for his private equity and public company expertise.”
He received his B.S. from Cornell University in 1978, where he graduated first in his class at the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and his J.D. from the Columbia University School of Law in 1981 where he was an editor of the Columbia Law Review and a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. Gary clerked for the Hon. Edward N. Cahn in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Pennsylvania from 1981 to 1982. Gary joined Simpson Thacher in 1982 and became a Partner in 1989.
Gary is on the Executive Board of Venture for America, an organization that focuses on placing recent college graduates at start-up companies. Additionally, Gary was President of Miracle House from 2004 to 2007. Miracle House is a nonprofit organization that provides temporary housing for people coming to New York City to care for family members with life-threatening illnesses.
