Adam O. Emmerich

Adam Emmerich chairs Wachtell Lipton’s Corporate Department. His practice spans corporate transactions and securities law matters for public and private companies across a wide range of industries in the United States and internationally. He has represented companies in mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, spin-offs, joint ventures and financing transactions. His work also includes corporate governance, shareholder activism, takeover defense and contested acquisitions.

Among Adam’s M&A matters, he worked with T-Mobile USA and Deutsche Telekom on the $146 billion all-stock combination of T-Mobile and Sprint, for which The American Lawyer named him a Dealmaker of the Year. He led Wachtell Lipton teams representing Covidien plc in its $49.9 billion acquisition by Medtronic and Tim Hortons in its $12.2 billion combination with Burger King Worldwide. The American Lawyer named those transactions Global M&A Deal of the Year: Ireland and Global M&A Deal of the Year: Canada, respectively.

Adam and Robin Panovka co-chair Wachtell Lipton’s REIT M&A practice. Their work with REITs and real estate M&A has been profiled by Lawdragon, and Law360 named them Real Estate MVPs in 2022 and 2024. Adam’s transactional work has also included matters for longtime client Creative Artists Agency; The Hollywood Reporter named him one of Hollywood’s Top Dealmakers in 2017 and 2022.

Adam has been recognized by Chambers and Partners for corporate M&A, including U.S. and international and cross-border work, and for REITs. The Lexology Index has named him a Global Elite Thought Leader and lawyer of the year in M&A, as well as an expert in corporate governance and real estate M&A. He has also appeared on Forbes lists of America’s Top Lawyers and Top M&A Lawyers, and MergerLinks ranked him among North America’s top 10 M&A lawyers for both 2022 and 2023.

• Broadcom in its $147 billion proposal to acquire Qualcomm
• Deutsche Telekom and T-Mobile USA in the combination of T-Mobile USA and MetroPCS Communications at a $30 billion enterprise value, and Deutsche Telekom in its agreed $39 billion sale of T-Mobile to AT&T
• the board of Wyeth in its $68 billion acquisition by Pfizer
• Albertsons Companies’ 10% shareholder Schottenstein Stores Corp. in connection with Albertsons’ agreed $24.6 billion merger with Kroger
• Immunomedics in its $21 billion acquisition by Gilead
• Hill-Rom in its $12.4 billion acquisition by Baxter International
• National Instruments in its $8.2 billion acquisition by Emerson
• Frutarom Industries Ltd in its $7.1 billion acquisition by International Flavors & Fragrances
• Maxar Technologies in its $6.4 billion acquisition by Advent International
• Medtronic plc in its $6.1 billion sale of a portion of its Patient Monitoring & Recovery Division to Cardinal Health, and in its announced intention to separate its combined Patient Monitoring and Respiratory Interventions businesses
• Apellis in its $5.6 billion acquisition by Biogen
• Google in its participation in the $4.5 billion Nortel patent auction
• WESCO International in its $4.5 billion acquisition of Anixter International

• Swarthmore College, B.A. 1981
• University of Chicago Law School, J.D. 1985, with honors.
• Order of the Coif.
• Topics and Comments Editor, The University of Chicago Law Review

Adam is co-chair of the International Institute for the Study of Cross-Border M&A (XBMA), and co-chair of the advisory board of New York University’s NYU SPS Schack Institute of Real Estate REIT Center. Adam is a member of the American Law Institute, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Economic Club of New York. He has served as co-chair of the NYU Real Estate Institute’s Annual Symposium on REITs since its inception. He has been a member of the Corporate Academic Bridge Group of the NYU Pollack Center for Law & Business, and a frequent contributor to the Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation.

Adam is an active member and officer of the International Bar Association (IBA), serving as an officer in the Law Firm Management Committee, and a co-chair of the annual IBA M&A Conference in New York. Adam has been a speaker at IBA conferences around the world, including in Mumbai, Frankfurt, Paris, Rome, Tokyo, Singapore, Miami, Mexico City and Panama, among other places, reflecting his expertise and thought leadership in the international legal community.

• Delaware Chancery Court Cautions Against Reading Between the By-Lines,

  in Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, September 3, 2026 and Columbia Law School’s Blog on Corporations and the Capital Markets, September 8, 2026.

• New Year, New Proxy Voting Landscape,

  in Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance and Financial Regulation, Friday, January 9, 2026.

• Mergers and Acquisitions — Reviewing 2025 and Looking Ahead to 2026,

  in Harvard Law School Forum on Corporate Governance, December 20, 2025 and Columbia Law School’s Blog on Corporations and the Capital Markets, December 23, 2025.

• REITs: Mergers and Acquisitions,

  Law Journal Press, updated through 2026 (first published 2006).

• REITs Come of Age,

  in The Business Lawyer, Volume 79 Issue 1, February 9, 2024.

• In Depth: Mergers & Acquisitions (U.S. chapter),

  Law Business Research, London, Nineteenth ed. 2025 (Eighteenth ed. 2024, Seventeenth ed. 2023, Sixteenth ed. 2022).