Gil Menna is a co-chair of the firm’s REITs and Real Estate M+A Practice. Mr. Menna also participates in the firm’s Mergers & Acquisitions, Capital Markets, Public Companies, Real Estate Tax and Private Investment Funds Practices. He is a former member of Goodwin’s Management and Executive committees, and former chair of the firm’s global Real Estate Capital Markets Group.

Mr. Menna represents many of the nation’s leading publicly traded real estate operating companies in connection with their merger and acquisition, corporate finance and corporate governance matters. In addition to his extensive knowledge of the public REIT industry, he also has significant experience representing a variety of real estate investment managers in connection with their private equity capital, merger and acquisition and portfolio acquisition transactions.

For the past eight years, Mr. Menna has captained Team Goodwin in the Pan-Mass Challenge, a charity bike ride which raises money for the Dana-Farber Cancer Institute. In that time, Goodwin has raised over $670,000 for cancer research and treatment. He has also participated in the Pan-Mass Challenge charity bike ride for 20 years.

Areas of Practice

REITs and Real Estate M+A
Mergers + Acquisitions
Capital Markets
Public Companies
Real Estate Tax
Real Estate Investment Funds

Experience

Over the several years, he has assisted clients in structuring and executing REIT transactions totaling well in excess of $160 billion, with more than $120 billion in M&A transactions and $40 billion in equity and debt securities offerings.

Most recently, he has represented:

• Monogram Residential Trust in connection with its proposed highly structured $3 billion privatization transaction with Greystar and a consortium of foreign investors
• Underwriting syndicate in Invitation Homes’ $1.8 billion IPO, the largest U.S. IPO since October 2015 and the second largest REIT IPO ever
• MAA (Mid-America Apartment Communities, Inc.) in its $3.9 billion acquisition with Post Properties Inc.
• The Scion Group LLC in its $1.4 billion acquisition (in joint venture with Canada Pension Plan Investment Board and the Government of Singapore Investment Corporation) of University House Communities Group, Inc.
• Paramount Group Inc. in connection with its $2.6 billion IPO, the largest IPO in the REIT industry ever
• Essex Property Trust in its $15.4 billion merger with BRE Properties, creating the third-largest multifamily REIT in the country
• MAA (Mid-America Apartment Communities, Inc.) in its $8.6 billion acquisition of Colonial Properties Trust, Inc.
• Cole Credit Property Trust II in its $7.1 billion acquisition by Spirit Realty Capital, Inc.
• AvalonBay Communities, Inc. in its $16 billion acquisition (in joint venture with Equity Residential) of Archstone Enterprise LP
• CreXus Investment Corp in its $ 1 billion acquisition by Annaly Capital Management, Inc.

Professional Activities

Mr. Menna is a Board Associate member of NAREIT, and a member of the Real Estate Roundtable and the board of directors of New York University's Real Estate Institute's REIT Center.

He is an adjunct professor and lecturer in law at Columbia University, where he teaches a course on real estate M&A and restructurings.

Mr. Menna has written and lectured extensively on topics in real estate securities and mergers & acquisitions, as well as on tax law issues facing the real estate capital markets industry.

Recognition

Mr. Menna is widely recognized as one of the nation’s leading REIT attorneys and has practiced in the real estate M&A and real estate securities area for over 33 years. In 2010, during NAREIT’s 50 anniversary, he was honored with the association’s Lifetime Achievement Award for his outstanding contributions to the REIT market. He is annually recognized as a “Star Individual” in Nationwide REITs by Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business and was most recently named to the Legal 500’s inaugural Hall of Fame list for his work in the REIT space. He has also been selected for inclusion in the Lawdragon 500, Chambers Global: The World’s Leading Lawyers for Business, U.S. News-Best Lawyers and, as a young lawyer, was previously selected for inclusion in The American Lawyer’s “Forty-five Under 45” – a list of young lawyers “who are making their mark today and will lead the profession tomorrow.”

Credentials

Education

• M.L.T., 1983
  Georgetown University
• J.D., 1982
  Georgetown University Law Center
• B.A., 1978
  Syracuse University
  (magna cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa)

Admissions

Bar
Massachusetts
California
New York

Courts
U.S. Tax Court

Robin Panovka co-heads Wachtell Lipton’s leading Real Estate and REIT M&A Groups. He focuses principally on M&A and strategic transactions across the real estate, REIT, hospitality, gaming and retail sectors, and also advises on general cross-border M&A and large-scale projects such as the redevelopment of the World Trade Center in Manhattan.

Robin has been named one of the Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in the U.S., and is consistently ranked as one of the leading REIT and real estate M&A lawyers by Chambers, Legal 500, Who's Who Legal and similar publications. He has been featured in a number of publications for his leadership in real estate and M&A, including as an American Lawyer “Dealmaker" and is a recipient of NYU's 2015 Urban Leadership Award.

He is the co-author of "REITs: Mergers and Acquisitions," a leading treatise published by Law Journal Press, and has authored many articles and papers on related subjects. He is co-chair of the NYU REIT Center and has served as an adjunct professor at Columbia Business and Law Schools and in NYU’s Masters in Real Estate Program. He is a founding director of the International Institute for the Study of Cross-Border M&A (XBMA), a joint venture among Peking University, Cambridge and NYU. He speaks frequently on topics in his fields, including chairing annual conferences for the NYU REIT Center, Practising Law Institute and XBMA. He is also active on a number of educational and non-profit boards, including the boards of Duke Law School, and NYU’s Real Estate Institute; is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the American College of Real Estate Lawyers; and serves on the Cornell University Council.