Pillsbury

Chairman: David T. Dekker
Number of Partners Worldwide: approx 330
Number of other Lawyers Worldwide: approx 370

FIRM OVERVIEW:
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP is an international law firm with a particular focus on the technology and media, energy, financial services, and real estate and construction sectors. Recognised as one of the most innovative law firms by Financial Times and one of the top firms for client service by BTI Consulting, Pillsbury and its lawyers are highly regarded for its forward-thinking approach, its enthusiasm for collaborating across disciplines and its authoritative commercial awareness.

MAIN AREAS OF PRACTICE:
Energy & Natural Resources: Pillsbury has advised on precedent-setting energy industry deals and projects in 75 countries worldwide, offering clients a combination of geographic reach, legal and regulatory depth, and energy-sector-specific experience that is unmatched among the world’s leading law firms. A leading practice in nuclear law, oil and gas, and renewable and alternative energy, Pillsbury has received more than a dozen Deal of the Year awards from leading publications for projects in North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia. In the field of natural resources and the environment, Pillsbury was named the environmental law firm of the year in 2014 by US News and Best Lawyers. With a team of 40 lawyers working full-time on environmental matters, Pillsbury is home to one of the largest dedicated environmental practices in the United States.
Real Estate & Construction: Pillsbury has a unique history of deal-making throughout the United States, with leading real estate practices for more than 50 years on the East and West coasts. Because of its size and geographic reach, the firm’s real estate practice group is one of the few national practices capable of handling the full range of assignments, from multijurisdictional portfolio transactions to single-asset deals in local markets. Lawyers on the construction counseling and dispute resolution team have been hailed by Chambers as part of the “preeminent practice of its kind in the United States.” They’ve earned this distinction by working on some of the world’s most complex construction projects: the Panama Canal extension, major infrastructure cases around the globe and two of the largest hospital disputes in history, as well as commercial, industrial and residential projects worldwide.
Technology: Pillsbury established the firm’s technology industry legal practice in 1968, when it incorporated Intel. Today, the firm’s technology industry practice is one of the world’s largest, comprising more than 250 lawyers based in the United States, Europe and Asia. From incubator to IPO, from M&A to international expansion, Pillsbury lawyers guide technology companies of all sizes and at all stages of development. In the last 30 years, the firm has filed more than 52,000 patents and over 19,000 trademarks, including foreign marks in around 145 different countries. Pillsbury protects the intellectual property of its clients through the efforts of its high-stakes IP litigation practice, which ranks among the top 10 in the nation in patent, trademark and copyright litigation. Technology clients also benefit from the firm’s top-ranked global sourcing practice. Among the most experienced advisory teams in the word, the firm’s global sourcing lawyers have led more than 750 transactions worth more than half a trillion dollars in contract value, and represented 30% of the Fortune 100.
Financial Services: Pillsbury’s finance lawyers advise more than 200 banking and investment institutions, including some of the world’s largest. The firm’s domestic and international clients rely on it for regulatory advice and guidance on a wide range of financial transactions, including commercial lending, derivatives, equipment finance, leveraged finance, project finance, trade finance, structured finance, debt restructuring, tax-exempt financing, and distressed investing and debt trading. Pillsbury also offers a broad spectrum of corporate trust and agency services from initial issuance to defaulted obligations. The firm’s clients are typically foreign and domestic banks, insurance companies, funds and other financial institutions. The firm also serves the company side of financial transactions for the firm’s corporate clients.

For more than a century, Pillsbury has discreetly served as trusted counsel to some of the wealthiest individuals in the world—testament that time may change the form, but not the substance, of excellence. Today, Pillsbury’s clientele holds in excess of US $1 trillion in private wealth.

Pillsbury guides clients to confidently and successfully navigate ever more complex, continually changing laws, as they forge their legacies through the accumulation, preservation and transmission of wealth. The firm delivers perspective, protection, partnership and sage advice through a distinguished tradition of service. The firm's private wealth practice is intentionally small to offer its clientele a boutique and customized experience. At the same time, the firm's clients have access to all the exceptional resources a global law firm can offer, with service capabilities in all major legal disciplines and geographically from the US and Europe to Asia, Latin America and the Middle East. The firm tailors bespoke solutions for each client, based upon a comprehensive understanding of needs, expectations and objectives, whether the client is an investor, entrepreneur, family or private office, charitable foundation, trustee, sports and entertainment professional, investment fund manager or corporate executive. It also understands the nuanced relationships between business and family, which are often subtle yet complex. 

The firm's private wealth practice is unique for its range of tax acumen combined with exceptional estate, generation-skipping transfer (GST) and gift tax advice. The private wealth team also works closely with other attorneys at Pillsbury, who offer guidance in transactional business matters, as well as litigation and dispute resolution, in a host of private client-focused specialties, including art work and collectibles, wine and wineries, foundations and philanthropy, direct investment, campaign finance, residency, real estate and international tax advice.

As trusted advisors, the firm has developed generation-spanning relationships with its clients. The firm forges strong lines of communication with other trusted advisors in accounting, banking, investment and insurance, as well as its clients’ other partners, such as offshore and onshore administrative service providers, private investment funds, and trust companies. In addition, with Pillsbury’s proprietary back office services, its clients’ matters undergo continuous review by professionals sensitive to discovering tax, accounting and insurance risks and opportunities on a real-time basis.

Advisory: The firm's professionals draw on an extraordinary breadth and depth of knowledge and practical experience in private client matters to offer a strategic view of where the law is going, not only where it is today. This private wealth group advises clients worldwide on sensitive business and personal affairs, including:
• Mitigating income, estate, gift and GST tax liabilities
• Multiple passport and tax residency planning for US citizens and non-resident aliens, including expatriation planning, change in state tax residency planning and financial privacy and security advice
• Generational ownership of real estate, including like-kind exchanges of real property and UPREIT (umbrella partnership real estate investment trust) transactions
• Multijurisdictional taxation and tax treaty planning
• Establishment and structuring of family offices, funds and partnerships
• Wealth preservation and asset protective strategiesCreation of pre-immigration and other foreign trusts
• Family governance advice and planning
• Controlled foreign corporation (CFC) and passive foreign investment company (PFIC) planning
• US income, estate and gift taxation, both U.S. federal and state, of non-US residents, individuals, partnerships, and corporations including regulatory and compliance advice
• Foreign trust planning and structuring for non-US residents
• Structuring of management for family offices
• Family back office operations, administrative services, bookkeeping support, insurance management, and art and collectables management
• Succession planning for family and closely held businesses
• Reputational risk assessments and support
• Advice for financial privacy and security
• Establishing terrorist and emergency procedures for family and business
• Private placement life insurance (PPLI) planning and assessment by licensed life insurance professionals
• Elder and health law related matters

Estate, Probate & Family Dispute Litigation: Pillsbury’s private wealth team comprises experienced litigators who manage complex litigation involving multigenerational families with significant assets. Pillsbury’s sophisticated and sensitive approach to dispute resolution can achieve positive results for its clients, while minimising expensive litigation. Where litigation is unavoidable, the firm's highly skilled litigators excel at achieving its client’s desired outcome. The team proactively advises its clients and structure their interests in ways that mitigate conflict to resolve disputes efficiently, delicately and favorably. When disputes arise, the team advocates for its clients with sophisticated and careful determination, recognising that the optimal outcome often includes a negotiated resolution as promptly as possible, without sacrificing financial benefits.
Tax Structuring: The firm's private wealth tax lawyers are sought out as tax authorities and seasoned advisors, and are quoted frequently in The New York Times, Bloomberg and The Wall Street Journal on matters including the effect of US tax reform on art collectors, carried interest rules, and foreign tax benefits under the new tax act affecting C corporations and flow-through entities. The firm's lawyers have co-authored numerous well-regarded tax treatises and monographs in the areas of S corporations, artwork, and estate and gift planning.
Estate Planning & Administration: With care and nuance, the firm's private wealth advisors assist individuals, families, family-owned businesses and charitable foundations in the planning and administration of complex trusts and estates, and in US and international estate, trust and tax planning.
Philanthropy: The firm's teams have crafted the formation of numerous public charities and private foundations benefiting health care, the natural environment, and needy and underprivileged children and have advised their ongoing governance and administration. The team has also advised on charitable giving and philanthropic activities involving for-profit enterprises. It is skilled in advising and preparing charitable gift agreements, both on behalf of sophisticated donors and for hospitals, museums and civic organisations.
Aircraft, Yachts & Automobiles: Clientele who own private aircraft, yachts, classic cars and hypercars know that Pillsbury's user-friendly service and superior performance are luxuries that they can afford, and necessities that they cannot afford to forgo. This team has negotiated the purchase of all classes of private aircraft from all major manufacturers on behalf of some of the wealthiest individuals and most successful corporations in the world. In addition, the team has guided countless buyers and sellers of aircraft through the secondary trading market.
Art: Pillsbury’s private wealth group has represented world-renowned museums, collectors and art galleries with respect to their collections. One of the firm's members has authored a tax management portfolio, published by the Bureau of National Affairs, concerning authors’ and artists’ tax copyright issues, as well as numerous articles and speeches regarding optimal planning for art collections.
Founders Planning & Business Affairs: The team regularly advises business owners in pre-IPO and prefunding tax and related planning and transactions. These include exit strategy planning; pre-sale of a business planning; UPREIT transactions; sales to intentionally defective grantor (IDGT); and planning preparation for an IPO.

A Global Platform of Services: The firm's private wealth group coordinates with other lawyers in the firm to deliver seamless, high-end services in the following areas:
• Real estate
• Business, private & trust litigation
• Insurance recovery & risk management
• Emerging growth & venture capital
• Private equity
• Technology transactions
• State income & residency tax considerations
• White collar defense
• Real estate litigation
• Executive compensation
• Regulatory

Recent Matters:
• Represented a private client with respect to utilising qualified opportunity zones for a multibillion-dollar redevelopment project for residential housing, commercial space and retail properties
• Advised high-net-worth clients with complex assets as to maximising current unlimited duration of GST exemption and leveraging gift and GST tax exemptions to exempt substantial assets from all transfer tax for 1,000 years. Created a bespoke plan for a private client to optimize estate and income tax plan considering the future IPO of the company
• Assisted a private client in restructuring multistate operations with respect to recent tax law changes, specifically Sections 199A and 168 of the IRC and with use of C corporations, including the sale of a minority interest to an international company
• Represented an ultra-high-net-worth Asian private client on the purchase and operation of a new Gulfstream G650ER jet and one (slightly) used Gulfstream G650ER jet. Also representing the client in connection with the sale of a Gulfstream G500 jet

Key Partners:
• Jennifer Jordan McCall
• Mike Kosnitzky
• Paul Jebely

Key Contacts:
Jennifer Jordan McCall
Tel: (Silicon Valley) +1 650 233 4020, (New York) +1 212 858 1546
Email: [email protected]

Michael Kosnitzky
Tel: (Miami) +1 786 913 4884, (New York) +1 212 858 1002
Email: [email protected]

Paul P. Jebely
Tel: (Hong Kong) +852 3959 7503