Russell Berman is a senior counsel in the Cooley Corporate Practice in the Firm's Business department. He was a partner at Kronish Lieb Weiner & Hellman LLP for more than 30 years prior to that Firm's merger into Cooley Godward Kronish LLP in 2006, and a partner at Cooley from 2006 through 2008. He was for a number of years a member of Kronish Lieb's executive committee and head of the corporate practice. He is resident in the New York office.
Mr. Berman advises individual entrepreneurs and corporate clients in complex business and financial transactions. He is active in the formation and representation of private investment funds, and he has an extensive background in business acquisitions and public and private securities matters. Mr. Berman has represented issuers, sponsors and investors in numerous debt and equity financings and other transactions, involving such diverse businesses as oil and gas exploration and development, electric power generation, the purchase and sale of major works of art, the development and licensing of medical devices and other technology, real estate financing, securities brokerage and trading, and equipment leasing.
Throughout his career, Mr. Berman has represented clients in the organization and negotiation of partnership and joint venture arrangements. Most prominently, he represented the former ITT Corporation in its partnership negotiations with Cablevision relating to their joint acquisition and ownership of Madison Square Garden and in ITT's partnership negotiations with Dow Jones relating to their joint acquisition of a New York cable television station. He regularly represents managers and other sponsors in the formation, financing and operation of domestic and offshore investment funds, the negotiation of compensation arrangements among partners, and transactions with seed capital providers.
His clients have included French, Swiss, Latin American, Canadian and Chinese financial and strategic investors in U.S. businesses. He led firm lawyers in the representation of U.S. and European affiliates of Canadian telecom provider Le Groupe Vidéotron Ltée involving extensive joint-venture negotiations and disputes with U.S. partners, a series of public debt offerings in the U.S., and business acquisitions and sales in the U.S. and the U.K. He represented Canadian forest products company Tembec, Inc. in over $1 billion of PIPES and other public debt offerings in the U.S., in the acquisition of a Louisiana pulp and paper mill from certain of the Crown companies, and in various other U.S. commercial and securities matters.
In one ultimately successful transaction that continued for over 10 years, Mr. Berman acted as principal counsel to the private developer of an 80 megawatt co-generation facility, involving all aspects of the acquisition and permitting of the project site, the development and construction of a dedicated natural gas pipeline, the obtaining of a long-term gas supply, and the negotiation and documentation of all arrangements with the project's steam host, the utility purchaser of the project's electric power output, construction contractors, and lenders and equity investors.
Prior to joining Kronish Lieb as an associate, Mr. Berman served as legislative assistant in Washington, D.C., to the late U.S. Representative Sidney Yates of Illinois, as a legal adviser to the Prime Minister of Ethiopia, and as a Peace Corps volunteer in Ethiopia.
Mr. Berman received his LL.B. from Harvard Law School and an A.B. degree from the University of Michigan.
He is a trustee of Project Renewal, Inc. and its medical services subsidiary, which provide housing, counseling and medical care to New York 's homeless. Formerly a trustee and the chair of the Pearl Theatre Company, Inc., Mr. Berman heads the firm's involvement in work for The Manhattan Institute for Cancer Research.
