Kevin Gooch has joined DLA Piper's finance practice from Alston & Bird, where he made partner in 2015.
Gooch, 37, represents banks, companies and private equity funds in lending transactions. A Daily Report On the Rise pick in 2015, he is making the move to DLA Piper as a partner after a decade at Alston & Bird.
At DLA Piper, Gooch said he'll focus on advising private equity firms as they finance acquisition deals.
"I spent a decade doing mostly lender-side work. It's an opportunity to add something else to the toolbelt," he said of his new borrower-side focus, adding that private equity firms typically use a bank loan for half the capital for an acquistion, with the rest coming from a fund.
DLA Piper's Atlanta office handles a lot of transactional work for private equity firms, Gooch said, and the firm recruited him to add lending law expertise.
"The DLA platform is much larger, and the international platform was attractive," Gooch said, adding that working with Joe Alexander Jr. and Gerry Williams was also a draw. Williams and Alexander both have M&A practices representing private equity firms as well as corporate buyers and sellers.
"Kevin is a rising star who is sought after to work on premier finance transactions," said Alexander in a statement. He is DLA Piper's Southeast managing partner and Southeast corporate and private equity practice chair. Alexander is based in Miami but also works out of Atlanta and New York.
At Alston & Bird, Gooch represented institutional bank clients such as SunTrust Bank, Regions Bank and Synovus Financial Corp. He said he developed his own clients at Alston & Bird, as well, but declined to name them, as they were still in transition.
Gooch is chairman-elect for 100 Black Men of Atlanta Inc. and will become the group's youngest leader, he said. He was president in 2015 of the Emerging 100 of Atlanta, which is 100 Black Men's young professional auxiliary. He's also a member of Leadership Georgia's 2017 class and an adjunct professor at Emory University School of Law, teaching commercial lending law.
In addition to his prior recognition from the Daily Report, he's been tapped for "40 under 40" awards from the American Bar Association, National Bar Association, Atlanta Business Chronicle, Georgia Trend Magazine and the University of Georgia alumni association.
BRIEFLY
King & Spalding partner Halli Cohn has joined Troutman Sanders as a partner in its product liability litigation practice, focused on pharmaceutical and medical device matters. Cohn has extensive trial experience, serving as lead trial counsel in automotive product liability, medical negligence and premises liability cases at King & Spalding. She's also managed mass-tort litigation over Paxil for GlaxoSmithKline and for General Motors in the Southeast. Cohn's "depth of experience will add to our strengths in this area as the firm continues to follow a planned strategy of growth," said Troutman's Atlanta managing partner Pete Robinson in a statement.