Another top partner has fled Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, the latest blow to the Wall Street law firm thrust into the spotlight when its employees were caught over the summer in a Central Park smoochfest.
Linklaters, a London-based firm, poached Wachtell dealmaker Mark Gordon to run its Americas business and global M&A, according to a Thursday press release.
The hire marked a coup for the UK firm, which has historically struggled to swipe talent from more powerful Wall Street giants, the Financial Times reported.
A spokesperson for Wachtell said: “We thank Mark for his service and wish him well in his next chapter.”
Wachtell – a legal powerhouse known for inventing the “poison pill” defense against hostile acquisitions – has been juggling a string of exits this year, along with the PR crisis that exploded when one of its partners was caught canoodling with a junior associate on camera.
The elite law firm is allegedly trying to force out Nathaniel Cullerton, the 45-year-old partner involved in the kissing catastrophe, after investigating his relationship with 29-year-old Kelsey Borenzweig, sources previously told The Post.
Another source said that while the Big Apple bigwig is in the process of leaving the firm, his job status has not changed since July and it would not be accurate to say he is being fired. It was unclear whether Cullerton is being paid while on leave.
In July, Wachtell lost co-chair Bill Savitt, who led OpenAI to victory in its legal battle with Elon Musk earlier this year. Savitt, 63, took five partners – Sarah Eddy, Anitha Reddy, Randall Jackson, Ryan McLeod and Brad Wilson – with him to Gibson Dunn’s New York office.
Legal sources told The Post the rival firm promised Savitt $96 million over three years. Another source familiar with the situation vehemently denied the claim, saying it “isn’t even in the ballpark of close.”
Cullerton had reportedly been preparing to make the jump with the sestet to Gibson Dunn, but the firm scrapped his hiring after the damning TikTok video went viral, The Post previously reported.
Wachtell does not prohibit consensual relationships between colleagues, but the Central Park incident was both an embarrassing public spectacle and a professional issue, since Cullerton was a partner while Borenzweig was a junior employee, The Post reported.
In April, Joshua Feltman, Wachtell’s former head of restructuring, left the firm and nabbed an $80 million pay package at rival Kirkland & Ellis.
Four younger partners also recently left Wachtell for Latham & Watkins.
The poaching wars have heated up across the industry this year as firms pay top-dollar to steal senior executives from rival firms, but it’s somewhat of a surprise for Wachtell – a top-paying firm and one of the last holding onto its lockstep pay structure.
At Wachtell, pay packages are largely linked to tenure rather than performance and its partners rake in higher earnings on average than any other US firm, according to the Financial Times.