Sidley Picks Off Cravath’s VC Co-Head in Latest Talent Sortie

Sidley Austin continues its raid on rivals by picking up Scott Bennett, co-head of Cravath Swaine & Moore’s venture capital and growth equity and digital assets practices, whose departure marks the latest in a string of losses for the Wall Street firm.

Bennett joins Sidley as head of its technology capital markets group and partner in its capital markets practice in New York, the firm announced Monday.

Bennett, the leading IPO lawyer at Cravath, has represented issuers, investors and investment banks in public and private securities offerings. He represented Goldman Sachs as underwriters in BitGo’s $2.08 billion IPO earlier this year in the first crypto IPO of 2026. He led Jose Cuervo’s nearly $1 billion IPO in 2017 and Robinhood’s $1.9 billion IPO in 2021.

Scott Bennett

Sidley Austin

“We’re thrilled about Scott joining us,” said Sidley management committee chair Yvette Ostolaza in an interview. The firm has depth in fintech, crypto, insurance, digital assets and technology, areas where Bennett has been “extremely successful” for clients, she said.

Bennett is “very talented, and he serves those industries that we’re looking to expand,” she said.

Sidley continues to aggressively add to its ranks. Debevoise & Plimpton finance chair Jeffrey Ross, Weil Gotshal & Manges’ Greg Featherman, Wilson Sonsini’s Jess Chang and Juan Arteaga, former chair of Crowell & Moring’s antitrust practice in New York, are just some of the partners that have joined the firm in recent weeks.

Sidley is “a dynamic and growing firm that’s also very future oriented. It was all those factors that made it a really good fit,” Bennett said.

Bennett joins a growing capital markets group which earlier this month added James Inness, co-head of Latham’s capital markets group, in London. The firm had previously picked up Latham partners Vladimir Mikhailovsky and David Stewart, who co-chair Latham’s corporate practice in London.

Inness and Stewart work with the same industries as Bennett, Ostolaza said. “We’re committed to expanding in the capital market space because there is an active market in a number of these industries and we want to be the leaders in representing clients in all of these spaces,” Ostolaza said.

Bennett will reunite with David Perkins, a former co-head of private equity for Cravath who joined Sidley last April.

Bennett started at Cravath as an associate in 2006, before making partner in 2014. He’s advised on IPOs, direct listings, spinoffs, de-SPAC transactions and other deals for companies such as AOL, Galaxy Digital, GrafTech International, Qualcomm, Radius Global Infrastructure, and Symetra Financial.

He led the Cravath team that advised healthcare giant Novartis AG in 2019 as it shed eye care business Alcon at a valuation of $29.8 billion in a deal that required separate listings on two stock exchanges.

And while Sidley is on a tear, Cravath is losing partners. The white shoe firm has historically been immune from partner departures but that has changed as competition for top talent among Big Law firms has increased.

So far in 2026, Cravath has seen nine of its partners hit the exits, some for rivals such as Davis Polk & Wardwell, Paul Hastings and Willkie Farr & Gallagher. Others like George Schoen, former co-head of its M&A group, have landed at new in-house positions.

Bennett’s hire was brokered by Centerpeak LLC’s Kristin Mueller and Sabina Lippman.