Whalen LLP is a corporate law firm based in Southern California.  The firm was founded in 2005 by lawyers from O’Melveny & Myers and Riordan & McKinzie (now Bingham McCutchen) to provide legal services to MatlinPatterson, a $9 billion private equity investor.

We focus on the following areas of corporate law:

• Private equity.  We represent MatlinPatterson with respect to its portfolio companies across a broad spectrum of industries.  We advise the MatlinPatterson fund on acquisitions, control investments, corporate governance, management compensation arrangements, public and private debt and equity fundings, restructurings, sales, and divestitures.

• Selling Stockholders.  We represent selling stockholders in many public offerings, often representing large groups of holders. In 2010, we have represented selling stockholders in the completed IPOs for Calix, Motricity, and BroadSoft, and we currently represent the selling stockholders in five ongoing IPOs.

• Companies.  We have extensive experience representing middle-market and emerging-growth companies, and their owners, in business transactions -- mergers and acquisitions, stock and asset sales, debt and equity financings, financial restructurings, joint ventures, and other commercial transactions.  We also negotiate licensing, distribution, manufacturing and co-development agreements for products and services.  We assist companies in structuring stock option plans and other equity incentive compensation.

As transactional lawyers, we take pride in our creative, practical approach to solving problems to make deals work.  We value each of our clients, and we strive to provide extremely responsive legal services.