MARK BONENFANT
Buchalter
Mark A. Bonenfant is a shareholder and co-chair of Buchalter’s Corporate Practice Group, and a former member of the firm’s Board of Directors. He has been with Buchalter for over 30 years. Bonenfant focuses his practice on public company representation, corporate securities, public and private mergers and acquisitions, corporate reorganizations, and other corporate and capital market transactions. His clients include public and private business entities and financial institutions, emerging growth companies, private equity and venture capital funds.
Bonenfant has extensive experience advising clients engaged in a full range of public and private acquisitions and divestitures, mergers, corporate spin-offs, management buyouts, leveraged buyouts, going private transactions, strategic alliances and joint ventures. These transactions are across industry lines including community banks, retail and hospitality, consumer products, apparel, technology, food and beverage, manufacturing, insurance, and health care. Bonenfant serves as the principal outside general corporate counsel for a number of public companies.
LARRY BRAUN
Sheppard Mullin Richter & Hampton LLP
Larry Braun, former chairman of the Sheppard Mullin’s Corporate Practice Group, advises clients ranging from family-owned businesses to multi-national corporations in many diverse industries such as technology, healthcare, consumer goods, aerospace and defense, and food and beverage. His principal areas of practice are mergers and acquisition transactions, general corporate law, corporate finance and securities law, and general business counseling. In addition to his law degree, Braun holds an MBA in Finance from the Kellogg School at Northwestern University and has attained the New Jersey CPA Certificate Requirements. He was previously a managing director of the largest private investment banking firm on the West Coast.
Braun is consistently one of the busiest corporate/M&A lawyers in Los Angeles. In the last year alone, he has led the deal teams on dozens of high-profile deals, including representing Intrepid Investment Bankers in its sale to MUFG Union Bank.
MICHAEL BROWN
Fenwick & West
Michael Brown concentrates his practice on strategic counseling to companies, ranging from newly formed startup teams to mature publicly traded corporations, and venture capital firms in a wide variety of corporate transactions, including venture capital financings, mergers and acquisitions, initial and follow-on public offerings, debt financings, and corporate reorganizations. In 2014, Brown was named among the top attorneys in the United States under the age of 40 by Law360.
Brown provides the kind of top-shelf, business-focused lawyering essential for game-changing technology innovators — from startups to mature market leaders — as well as leading venture capital firms and key incubators that help to finance these companies’ efforts. In 2019, Brown was one of the founding partners that opened Fenwick’s first office in the Los Angeles region, to better serve the firm’s 200-plus technology clients in the greater LA area.
MARK KELSON
Greenberg Traurig
Nationally recognized for his achievements in corporate law, Mark J. Kelson is the chair of global law firm Greenberg Traurig’s Los Angeles Corporate Practice. In addition to his leadership responsibilities, Kelson maintains a busy and diverse corporate practice, emphasizing complex transactional work, including mergers, acquisitions, leveraged buyouts, private and public debt and equity offerings, dividend recapitalizations and joint ventures.
Under Kelson’s leadership, the Los Angeles Corporate Practice advises leading companies and its boards of directors with respect to corporate governance, strategy and executive compensation issues. The group is highly sought-after from leading companies across a number of industries including technology, manufacturing, consumer products, aerospace, media, food and beverage, hospitality, restaurants, real estate, financial services and healthcare. Focusing on the business objectives of his clients, Kelson acts as lead counsel in domestic and cross-border transactions, and serves as lead counsel to private equity firms.
