Laurence J. Stein

Larry Stein is a tax partner in the Los Angeles office of Latham & Watkins and served as the global Chair of the Tax Department from 2000-2011. His major practice area is transactional tax, where he has extensive experience representing a variety of private equity firms, private and public companies and financial institutions with regard to the structuring and tax aspects of:

Mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, restructurings and tax-free reorganizations
Spin-off transactions (including obtaining numerous private letter rulings from the National Office of the Internal Revenue Service)
Offerings of debt, equity and other financial instruments
Partnerships

Mr. Stein is cited as a leading California Tax attorney by The Legal 500 US, ranked Band 1 by Chambers USA, recognized as a leading tax lawyer in the World Tax guide and named a world leading corporate tax lawyer by Who’s Who Legal. He has also lectured on various tax aspects of mergers, acquisitions and dispositions before numerous professional tax organizations, including:

The Tax Executives Institute (including the Houston, Boston, New York, Santa Clara, San Francisco and Los Angeles chapters)
The University of Chicago Tax Conference
The University of Southern California Tax Institute
The New York University Institute on Federal Taxation

Mr. Stein also serves on the advisory board of the New York University Institute on Federal Taxation.

Following law school, Mr. Stein clerked for the Hon. Walter J. Cummings, Chief Judge of the US Court of Appeals for the Seventh Circuit.

Mr. Stein's experience includes advising:

Demand Media in its tax-free spin-off of its domain services business
Questar Corporation in its spin-off of QEP Resources, Inc., in a tax-free dividend to stockholders
Actavis in its US$8.5 billion acquisition of Warner-Chilcott, an Ireland-based pharmaceutical company focusing on women’s healthcare
Actavis in its US$28 billion acquisition of Forest Laboratories, a specialty pharmaceutical company
Questcor Pharmaceuticals in its US$5.6 billion sale to Mallinckrodt, an Ireland-based biopharmaceutical company
Darden Restaurants in its US$2.1 billion sale of Red Lobster, a chain of full-service seafood restaurants, to Golden Gate Capital
Plains Exploration and Production Company, an independent oil and gas exploration and production company, in its US$10.75 billion tax-free merger with Freeport-McMoRan Copper and Gold, Inc.
Avery Dennison Corporation’s US$500 million sale of its office and consumer products business and designed and engineered solutions business to CCL Industries, Inc.
Exterran Holdings, Inc. in its US$360 million acquisition of natural gas compression assets from MidCon Compression, a subsidiary of Chesapeake Energy
Cadence Pharmaceuticals, a biopharmaceutical company focused on in-licensing, developing and commercializing proprietary products, in its US$1.4 billion sale to Mallinckrodt
Seamless North America, LLC in its merger with GrubHub, two leading providers of mobile and online portals that provide restaurant information and services