David Widger is Head of the Firm's Corporate Department. His key areas of expertise include mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, private equity, joint ventures, venture capital, corporate restructurings, capital markets and securities law.
David's practice involves advising a wide range of Irish and international public and private corporations, institutions and private equity funds on all legal aspects of their corporate affairs.
Some of his most significant transactions include acting for:
- RHJ International on its acquisition of KBC Asset Management Ltd (Dublin) from KBC Asset Management;
- Hellman & Friedman on their acquisition of Web Reservations International (Awarded 2010 Private M&A deal of the year by Finance Dublin);
- UBS and Davy as joint bookrunners in €1.24bn rights issue by CRH (Awarded 2010 Equity Capital Markets deal of the year by Finance Dublin);
- Guanabara Holdings on its hostile takeover bid for EcoSecurities plc;
- The receiver (Deloitte) on the sale of Waterford Wedgewood to KPS Capital Partners;
- Pfizer on the acquisition by Hovione of Pfizer's API manufacturing facility in Cork;
- Wyeth on the acquisition by Elanco Animal Health of Wyeth's Sligo based animal health business;
- Irish Continental Group on takeover bids from Aella and the Moonduster consortium;
- FL Partners on its €244m acquisition of The Racing Post;
- Hibernian/Aviva on its €1.3bn bancassurance life and pensions merger with Ark Life;
- AIB on its €1.3bn financing of the acquisition of Jury's Doyle Hotel Group plc by JDH Acquisitions.
David sits on the Advisory Board of the UCD Michael Smurfit Graduate Business School.
David is consistently recognised by clients and peers in leading international publications for his knowledge of the law and expertise in dealing with complex issues including Chambers Global 2008, 2009 and 2010, Best Lawyers 2010, IFLR1000 2009, PLC Which Lawyer? 2008 and 2009, Chambers Europe 2007 and 2008 and The Legal 500, 2007 and 2008.