Michael focuses his practice on transactional, corporate and contract work for public and privately held companies, strategic business counseling, and capital formation and restructuring.
Michael has significant experience in mergers and acquisitions as well as public and private debt and equity financings, including exchange offers, spin-offs, recapitalizations, stock splits, venture capital investments, and private placements of senior and mezzanine debt and equity securities. He also has significant experience representing closely held companies that have significant financial, regulatory, operational or shareholder issues.
Representative Experience
- Represented Signet Jewelers, the world’s largest retailer of diamond jewelry, in its acquisition of Diamonds Direct USA Inc., a direct-to-consumer destination retailer, for $490 million.
- Represented McCarthy Capital in its substantial minority investment in Smartlink, a provider of wireless infrastructure asset inventory and management, network services, network real estate, and IT staffing.
- Represented Gridiron Capital Partners in its divestiture of Rough Country, a leading provider of branded aftermarket performance-enhancing products and accessories, to TSG Consumer Partners.
- Represented Gridiron Capital in its acquisition of AML RightSource — a Cleveland-based provider of anti-money-laundering, Bank Secrecy Act and related financial crime-fighting services — from its prior private equity owner, New York’s Clarion Capital.
- Represented a private equity sponsor in its acquisition of the equity of a custom-printed packaging and labeling company.
- Represented private equity owned buyer in an add-on acquisition of a company that assembles and distributes data-loggers.
- Represented the buyer in its acquisition of a car wash equipment distributor and installer.
- Represented buyer in its acquisition of a national, full-service logistics business focused primarily on courier, warehouse management and distribution services.
- Represented private equity fund in its sale of leading end-to-end provider of technology solutions for education to private equity owned technology company.
- Benesch served as counsel to buyer KB Holding Inc. in the acquisitions of Kings Food Markets and Balducci’s Food Lover’s Market from Angelo, Gordon & Co. and MTN Capital Partners LLC.
