A group of actual estate transactional companions in New York is poised to depart Kasowitz Benson Torres to join a Texas-based firm, in step with assets familiar with the actions. Wallace Schwartz, Julia Sanabria, and Adam Endick, who arrived at Kasowitz more than six years in the past after operating collectively at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, are preparing to depart Kasowitz, the resources stated. Schwartz, head of the firm’s actual property transactional group, arrived in 2011, and Endick and Sanabria joined in 2012. One supply said the trio is eyeing Vinson & Elkins.
Marc Kasowitz, founding and dealing with a partner of Kasowitz, mentioned the moved in a statement to ALM. “We have usually been targeted on being the preeminent litigation firm in the nation, and the departure of this transactional group has no effect on that core electricity or our general practice,” he said.
Less than years ago, the Kasowitz firm appointed Schwartz as a co-managing associate of administration, in conjunction with Cindy Caranella Kelly, a litigator. The appointments in 2017 got here after the firm was thrust inside the public eye through Marc Kasowitz’s representation of President Donald Trump. The founding accomplice drew unflattering press attention, and control committee member Aaron Marks left for Kirkland & Ellis that 12 months.
Since Schwartz joined the company, the actual property transactional practice grew to include greater than 30 legal professionals and paralegals. Schwartz and others have represented builders and landlords in several excessive-profile projects in Manhattan, along with at Hudson Yards. The firm has touted the real property practice’s ranking the various top 10 firms in real estate transaction volume in New York City for every of the past two years from The Real Deal, a change e-book. From July 2017 to June 2018, the institution labored on deals worth nearly $500 million, Kasowitz’s website stated. The partners did no longer reply to requests for the remark. A spokesman for Vinson & Elkins did now not straight away return messages in search of remark.
