Jonathan Davis is a corporate partner in the New York office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP. His practice primarily focuses on public and private company M&A transactions and activist defense. Jonathan also advises corporations and their directors on general corporate and governance matters. In addition, Jonathan has extensive experience advising on business combination transactions involving special-purpose acquisition companies (SPACs).
Over the course of his career, Jonathan has advised on transactions having an aggregate value of approximately $750 billion. In recent years, he has participated in some of the largest and most high profile M&A transactions in history, including Anheuser-Busch InBev’s $123B acquisition of SABMiller, Bristol Meyer Squibb’s $90B acquisition of Celgene, AbbVie’s $63B acquisition of Allergan and H.J. Heinz’s $60B merger with Kraft.
In 2021, Jonathan was one of six M&A attorneys recognized in Bloomberg Law’s inaugural “They’ve Got Next: The 40 Under 40” awards, and was profiled by Insider as one of 29 M&A lawyers “leading the way on billion-dollar M&A deals.” He was recognized as a 2020 “Dealmaker of the Year” by The American Lawyer, and he was one of five M&A attorneys nationwide chosen as a Law360 MVP in 2019. Chambers and Partners has listed Jonathan as a top M&A attorney in 2020, 2021 and 2022. He was also named a "Rising Star" in M&A by Law360 in 2017 and 2018 and has been repeatedly recognized by The Legal 500 U.S. for his work in M&A generally and in the technology sector from 2016–2022. In addition, after naming him a “Rising Star” in 2017, IFLR1000 recognized Jonathan as “Highly Regarded” in 2021 and 2022.