Steven J. Matays

Mr. Matays advises on the tax aspects of structuring financial instruments and executive compensation. Among others, recent notable matters include advising:

• Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc. in its $71.3 billion acquisition by the Walt Disney Company and the related pre-merger spin-off of certain news, sports and broadcast businesses;
• Sprint Corporation (as co-counsel) regarding the regulatory aspects of its $59 billion merger with T-Mobile US, Inc.;
• Worldpay in its $43 billion merger with FIS;
• Ecolab in the tax-free spin-off of its upstream energy business and its $4.4 billion combination with Apergy;
• Rockwell Collins, Inc. in its $30 billion acquisition by United Technologies Corporation;
• Viagogo Entertainment in its pending $4 billion acquisition of StubHub from eBay; 
• DST Systems, Inc. in its $5.4 billion acquisition by SS&C Technologies Holdings, Inc.;
• Ash Grove Cement Company in its $3.5 billion acquisition by CRH plc;
• Pinnacle Entertainment, Inc. in its $2.8 billion acquisition by Penn National Gaming, Inc.;
• Bruce Sherman, as part of an ownership group led by former New York Yankee Derek Jeter, in the $1.2 billion acquisition of Major League Baseball’s Miami Marlins;
• Hewlett Packard Enterprise Company in the tax-free spin-offs of:
  • its enterprise services business and its combination with Computer Sciences Corp.; and
  • its software business and its combination with Micro Focus International plc;
• Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. in its:
  • $3.8 billion sale of the performance materials division of its materials technologies segment to Evonik Industries AG; and
  • tax-free spin-off of its materials technologies business into a separate, publicly owned company called Versum Materials, Inc.

Mr. Matays has been repeatedly selected for inclusion in Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business, Expert Guides’ Guide to the World’s Leading Tax Advisers and The Legal 500, and also was previously named a 2019 Tax MVP by Law360.