Latham Poaches More Wachtell Partners Adding M&A, Finance Duo

Latham & Watkins hired two partners from Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, adding to a string of recruits from the powerful New York deals firm.

Emily Johnson and Mark Stagliano joined Latham as partners in its Manhattan office, the firm said. Johnson joins Latham’s banking and private credit and capital markets practices, and Stagliano joins its mergers & acquisitions and private equity practice.

“Their market-leading practices directly support our strategic focus to advise our clients on complex transactions across the capital structure and high-profile public company M&A,” Rich Trobman, Latham’s chair and managing partner, said in a statement. “No other firm combines our excellence and scale — nor our ambition — and Emily and Mark joining us is another major milestone for our firm.”

Latham has added four partners in the last year from Wachtell, where departures historically have been rare. The firm is among the most profitable in the country, and part of a small group of elite players sticking to a seniority-based “lockstep” compensation system.

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John Sobolewski in February 2025 left Wachtell for Latham, where he now leads the firm’s liability management practice. M&A partner Zach Podolsky made the same jump less than five months later.

Wachtell did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

Johnson has advised on financing aspects of major transactions, including guiding RTX Corporation in its separation into three public companies and multiple mergers and acquisitions. She was part of a team that represented Diamondback Energy in its $26 billion merger with Endeavor Energy Resources and Hess Corporation in its $53 billion acquisition by Chevron Corporation.

Stagliano’s representations include United Technologies in multiple transactions, including its $147 billion merger with Raytheon. He also advised T-Mobile and Deutsche Telekom in the $146 billion combination of T-Mobile and Sprint. Stagliano was promoted to partner at Wachtell in 2020, while Johnson was elevated the prior year.

Latham topped the M&A charts last year, guiding global deals worth about $786.7 billion, topping Kirkland and Wachtell, which came in third with $621.2 billion, according to Bloomberg’s League tables.