Eric A. Klein

Eric Klein is a partner in the Corporate Practice Group in the firm's Century City office.

Areas of Practice

Mr. Klein assists clients with negotiated and hostile acquisitions, cross-border acquisitions, going private transactions, venture capital financing and strategic partnering. He represents both privately held and publicly traded companies, working with both emerging companies and Fortune 500 companies.

Mr. Klein recently represented an American company in two separate acquisition transactions involving control of Canadian public companies in the health care sector. He also advised on a negotiated transaction between an Indian public company and a United States entertainment public company, which involved going private and delisting issues. In past years, Mr. Klein represented TDK Corporation in the first Japanese tender offer ever for a United States semiconductor company. He also represented a large Japanese company in a competitive acquisition and going private transaction for one of the largest nutraceutical companies in the United States. Recent private company transactions include sales of a medical device products division to a public company, sales of a privately held genomics company to a Canadian public company, a strategic alliance and investment transaction between two enterprise software companies, and a corporate control contest for a privately held telecommunications company.

Mr. Klein has extensive experience with issues confronting newly formed, emerging and middle market companies. Having practiced in San Francisco and Los Angeles, he has represented numerous founders, venture capital investors and growth companies in a wide range of industries, including health care, Internet, computers and software, biotechnology, medical devices and technology, entertainment, publishing, retail and consumer goods, financial services and consulting. Mr. Klein has worked closely with management and investors to structure and form companies, negotiate compensation arrangements, raise capital through public and private securities offerings, enter into corporate partnering and distribution arrangements and undertake mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Klein’s practice also includes corporate governance, intellectual property, privacy and information technology matters, domestic and international commercial transactions and general corporate law.

Mr. Klein also teaches at the UCLA Anderson School of Business on business planning, entrepreneurial operations, securities law and intellectual property issues. He has developed a specialty in negotiation and has trained many business leaders, lawyers and entrepreneurs in basic and advanced negotiation techniques.

Prior to joining the Firm, Mr. Klein was a leader of Katten Muchin Rosenman LLP’s West Coast Mergers and Acquisitions and Securities Practices. He was a founding partner in the Los Angeles firm of Klein & Martin LLP and grew it to sixteen attorneys before its merger with Shaw Pittman LLP in 2001. He also practiced in the Bay Area with McCutchen Doyle Brown and Enersen and Howard, Rice, Nemerovski, Canady, Falk and Rabkin.

Education

• J.D., Boston University School of Law, 1985
• A.B., Princeton University, 1981, magna cum laude

Admissions

• California, 1986
• U.S. District Court, Northern District of California

Honors

• He has received the highest quality rating of "AV" from the Martindale-Hubbell legal directory.
• Southern California Super Lawyer for Securities and Corporate Finance in Los Angeles Magazine and Southern California Super Lawyers Magazine, 2005 and 2006

Memberships

• Board of Advisors, UCLA Anderson School of Business Ventures Program
• Member, American Bar Association Section of Intellectual Property Law, Intellectual Technology Transfer Committee
• Member, Association for Corporate Growth Los Angeles Program Committee
• Member, Software Council of Southern California – Los Angeles Executive Committee
• Member, Los Angeles Ventures Association
• Previous Executive Committee Member, California Institute of Technology/Massachusetts Institute of Technology Enterprise Forum

Articles

• Private Equity Funds Seek Health Care Acquisitions, The National Law Journal, June 23, 2008