Crain's Detroit Business: Mark Schneider and Joe DeVito Discuss Dinsmore's New M&A Team in Detroit
Crain's Detroit Business profiled Dinsmore's the new M&A team in the city this week. New partner Joe DeVito and Office Managing Partner Mark Schneider talked to Crain's about why the team came to the firm and what they plan to build at Dinsmore going forward. An excerpt is below.
"It seems Detroit is a hot spot where national firms want to develop their M&A (teams)," DeVito said. "We're no longer just automotive. There's aerospace, technology, software, life sciences, intellectual property … health care M&A has really exploded. Detroit's really become a hub for all sorts of industries." DeVito's team will be based mostly in Dinsmore's Troy office. The other M&A specialists and partners are Jeffrey Hoover, Evonne Xu and Ian Larkin, as well as Jane Hahn, who joins the firm's Chicago office.
The team brings a book of clients that includes Detroit-based DTE Energy and Omaha-based PE firm McCarthy Capital. DeVito said national firms began courting his group in the past year, and he had been considering merging his team with a bigger firm to help elevate their practice. So, he brought the idea to George Vincent, managing partner and chairman of Dinsmore, who had hired DeVito fresh out of Wayne State University Law School in 1995. That's how it came full circle.
"We specialize in mergers and acquisitions across various industry sectors, and we really felt we needed a larger national platform," DeVito said. "Dinsmore provides the breadth and the depth that we need."
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Mark Schneider, Dinsmore's office managing partner for Michigan, said his goal is to grow the firm's Michigan presence to 50-75 attorneys in the next few years.
"The firm is always looking for opportunities for growth," Schneider said, adding that more potential mergers and acquisitions for the firm itself are on the table. "Continuous strategic growth is what we're about."
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"As a group, we've always focused on providing the highest level of service to our clients, and joining Dinsmore's national platform will only improve upon that," DeVito said in a release.