Robert A. Kindler has endowed the Law School’s newest chaired professorship, the 24th to be established since Richard Revesz became dean in 2002. Alan Sykes, an international law and economics expert who comes from Stanford Law School, is to be the first Robert A. Kindler Professor of Law; he will deliver the inaugural chair lecture on October 17.
Kindler ’80 is a member of NYU Law's Board of Trustees and currently vice chairman and global head of mergers and acquisitions at Morgan Stanley. In that role, he has served as an advisor for many major deals, including the Continental-United merger, the Barnes & Noble proxy fight, and CF Industries’ hostile takeover of Terra Industries against a competing bid. Kindler was previously global head of M&A at JPMorgan Chase. During his time there, the firm rose to second place in the league tables ranking deal volume. He moved to investment banking in 2000 after building a highly successful legal career at Cravath, Swaine & Moore, where he was a senior partner working on such high-profile matters as the creation of DreamWorks.
In a 2011 interview in the NYU Law magazine, Kindler said, of the difference between law and banking, “When I was at Cravath, the culture of the firm was that a partner, no matter how senior, needed to read every document—and every word of every document. So as a partner at Cravath, you were still negotiating merger agreements. As a banker, you are not doing that kind of work; it is much more about your interpersonal skills, plotting strategy, and being out meeting with clients. I find that far more interesting.”
Posted on August 30, 2012