Dean's Advisory Council

Michael Woronoff
Partner
Kirkland & Ellis

Michael Woronoff, a transactional partner in the Los Angeles office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP, has been recognized as a top M&A and Capital Markets lawyer by The Legal 500 United States since 2007. For over three decades, he has advised some of the leading private equity firms in their most complex transactions spanning a wide variety of sectors. In addition, he is a trusted advisor to a number of senior PE fund managers, entrepreneurs, and family-owned businesses. The Daily Journal has named him nine times as one of the top 100 lawyers in California.

Mr. Woronoff has been lead counsel in acquisitions and dispositions by, among others, Apollo Global, Ares Management, Freeman Spogli, The Gores Group, Great Hill, The Jordan Companies, Leonard Green, LightBay Capital, Oaktree, Parthenon, SilverLake, and Platinum Equity. His notable transactions include the sales of the Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra Estates (two of the first large scale transactions to monetize a celebrity’s name and likeness); the acquisitions of MGM Studios, Hannah-Barbera, GNC, and Neiman Marcus; and the innovative IPO of Ares Management (which became a publicly traded partnership), and subsequent conversion of Ares to a C-corporation, the first time a publicly traded investment firm made the switch.

Mr. Woronoff is a member of the board of directors of Alexandria Real Estate Equities (NYSE: ARE). He has also served on the boards of directors of several private companies, including AccessDNA, TransDimension, and u-Nav Microelectronics.

He is a member of the Board of Governors of Cedars-Sinai, the Board of Trustees (and Chair of the Finance Committee) of the Alliance College-Ready Public Schools Foundation, and the Dean’s Advisory Council of the Mitchell E. Daniels, Jr. School of Business at Purdue University. For over 20 years, Mr. Woronoff has been an adjunct at UCLA's School of Law, where he developed and teaches the popular course “Venture Capital and the Start-Up Company.”

Previously, Mr. Woronoff was a partner at Proskauer Rose, head of Proskauer's Los Angeles office, co-head of its international Private Equity/M&A group, and a member of the firm's Executive Committee. Prior to Proskauer, he co-founded Shelter Capital Partners, a Southern California-based private equity fund investing in technology and technology-enabled businesses at all stages of development. Prior to Shelter, he was a transactional partner at Skadden, Arps.