Robert B. Schumer is chair of the Corporate Department and is co-head of the firm’s Mergers and Acquisitions Group. Over the past 15 years, Mr. Schumer has served as the lead lawyer in the negotiation and structuring of mergers and acquisitions, dispositions, joint ventures and leveraged buyouts on behalf of a diverse range of clients, including public and private companies, private equity funds, financial institutions and other entities. He regularly provides strategic counsel to corporations and their boards of directors on corporate governance, fiduciary duty, and other corporate matters.

Mr. Schumer's recent experience includes the representation of Time Warner Inc. in its $17.9 billion acquisition of the cable properties of Adelphia Communications Corporation. As a result of his work on this complex transaction, American Lawyer named him among its 2005 Dealmakers of the Year. Other major transactions include representing Endeavor Agency in its 2009 merger with William Morris Agency; Agrium Inc. in its $2.65 billion acquisition of UAP, creating North America's largest agriculture retailer; Farallon Capital Management in its $7.9 billion acquisition, along with Simon Property Group, of Mills Corporation, and its $1.84 billion bid for the manufactured home community business of Affordable Residential Communities; The Lightstone Group in the $2.3 billion sale in 2010 of its portfolio company, Prime Outlets Acquisition Company, to Simon Property, the largest public real estate company in the United States; Elliott Associates in its $1.8 billion unsolicited offer for Novell, a leader in intelligent workload management and in Elliott's participation as an equity sponsor in Attachmate’s subsequent $2.2 billion acquisition of Novell in 2011; Western Coal in its 2010 arrangement agreement with Walter Energy, pursuant to which Walter Energy agreed to acquire Western Coal for approximately $3.2 billion; and Universal American in connection with the $1.25 billion sale of its Medicare Part D business to CVS Caremark, making CVS one of the nation's largest providers of prescription drug services for Medicare Part D beneficiaries, and spin off of its remaining businesses to its public shareholders.

Additional high-profile transactions in which Mr. Schumer has been engaged include the acquisition of Warner Communications by Time Inc.; Time Warner Inc.'s $2.8 billion acquisition of the cable television interests of the Newhouse family; Wyndham in its $3.24 billion sale to Blackstone; EnCana Corporation, Canada’s largest oil and gas company, in its $2.7 billion successful tender offer for Tom Brown, Inc.; Battle Mountain Gold Company in connection with its stock-for-stock acquisition by Newmont Mining Corporation; Time Warner Inc. in its $58 billion bid for AT&T Broadband and in the $9 billion restructuring of Time Warner Entertainment, with Comcast and AT&T; and the consortium led by Edgar Bronfman, Jr., in its $15 billion bid for the entertainment assets of Vivendi S.A.; the $725 million acquisition by Heinz of the pet food business of Quaker Oats; the $1.3 billion hostile acquisition of Rockefeller Center Properties, Inc., by an investment group led by Goldman Sachs, Tishman Speyer and David Rockefeller; W-Westmont's hostile acquisition of UniHost; the $2 billion sale of Six Flags Entertainment Corporation to Premier Parks Inc.; King World Productions, Inc.'s $2.5 billion merger with CBS; USA Networks, Inc.'s acquisition of Styleclick.com Inc.; Spear, Leeds & Kellogg's $7.5 billion sale to Goldman Sachs; and the $2.7 billion merger between Telemundo and NBC. He also represents Lazard Frères in its role as investment advisor, including in connection with Borden's acquisition by KKR, Conrail's $10 billion merger with CSX Corporation and Terra Networks' acquisition of Lycos.

In the joint venture area, his representations include Time Warner Inc. in the creation of Time Warner Entertainment, a $20 billion joint venture to which Time Warner contributed its Filmed Entertainment, HBOProgramming and cable television assets and in which two Japanese companies, Itochu Corporation and Toshiba Corporation, invested an aggregate of $1 billion; Time Warner Inc. in connection with the $2.5 billion investment in Time Warner Entertainment by US WEST, a regional bell operating company, which was one of the first major alliances between companies in the cable and telephone industries; and Time Warner Inc. in its negotiations with Sony Corporation to form the Columbia House Record Club, a 50-50 joint venture between Sony Music Group and Warner Music Group, which is currently the largest direct marketer of music and video products.

Mr. Schumer has also been involved in numerous other joint venture arrangements ranging from the formation of an international consortium that acquired the phosphate division of W.R. Grace, to the creation of Courtroom Television Network, the venture that owns the cable television channel known as "Court TV" and the $1.2 billion restructuring of the venture owning Six Flags Theme Parks.

Mr. Schumer was named a “Dealmaker of the Year (2005)” by The American Lawyer for his representation of Time Warner Inc. in its joint bid with Comcast Corporation to acquire Adelphia Communications Corporation's cable systems. He was selected as one of only 40 New York based lawyers listed in Law Business Research's International Who's Who of Merger and Acquisition Lawyers and has been recognized as one of the leading M&A lawyers in New York by the peer review organizations Legal 500 and Chambers USA and Best Lawyers in America. In 2009, Mr. Schumer was selected by The Hollywood Reporter as one of its 2009 “Power Lawyers.” He was featured in The American Lawyer's "Forty-Five under 45 - Forty-five young lawyers who are making their mark today and will lead the profession tomorrow" and in Crain's "40 under 40 - an annual list of New York City's young movers and shakers," both of which were published in 1995.