Ed provides strategic communications counsel to U.S. and international companies and private equity firms contending with mission-critical business opportunities and challenges from special situations including crises, issues and transactions to long-term corporate positioning and investor relations programs. His cross-border experience includes matters throughout Asia, Europe, the Middle East and the Americas. His areas of expertise include:

Transaction Communications

He advises companies on communications in both friendly and unsolicited M&A, IPOs, SPACs and PIPE transactions. Assignments include assisting U. S. Steel with its announced sale to Nippon Steel Corporation; TPG Inc. with its acquisition of Angelo Gordon and its IPO; Magellan Midstream Partners with its sale to ONEOK; S&P Global with its acquisition of IHS Markit as well as the sale of Oil Price Information Service to News Corp.; Kansas City Southern with its acquisition by CP; EngageSmart with its sale to Vista Equity Partners; Warby Parker, Affirm and Frontier Airlines with their IPOs; Translate Bio with its sale to Sanofi; Sinclair Cos. with the sale of its branded marketing, renewable diesel and refining businesses to HollyFrontier; Reinvent Technology Partners with SPAC business combinations with Joby Aviation, Hippo, and Aurora Innovation; Affirm with its IPO and acquisitions of PayBright and Returnly; Opendoor with its acquisition by the SPAC, Social Capital Hedosophia; Mastercard with its acquisition of Finicity; WESCO International with its acquisition of Anixter International; KEMET with its acquisition by Yageo; Dada Nexus and Q&K International with their U.S. IPOs; Gannett with its acquisition by New Media and its successful defense of an unsolicited takeover attempt by MNG Enterprises; Fiserv with its acquisition of First Data; Apollo Management’s Momentive with its announced sale to an investor group comprised of KCC Corporation, Wonik QnC and SLJ Partners; Tianqi Lithium with its minority investment in SQM; Knauf with its acquisition of USG Corporation; Shire in its sale to Takeda.

Crisis Communications

He has considerable crisis and issues management experience including cybersecurity preparedness and incident response, government investigations and enforcement actions, ethics violations, litigation, layoffs, management changes, and earnings misses and restatements.

Shareholder Activism, Short Attacks & Corporate Governance

His experience includes counseling clients on engagement with and defense against activist hedge funds, dissident shareholders and short attacks including Burlington Stores (Spruce Point Capital), Berkshire Hills Bancorp (HoldCo Asset Management), Endurance International (Gotham Research), Gannett (MNG Enterprises), MBIA (Pershing Square), Newell Brands (Carl Icahn and Starboard), Samsonite (Blue Orca) and Sina (Aristeia Capital).

Restructuring & Bankruptcy

He has advised companies in connection with both court-supervised and out-of-court restructurings. Assignments include American Tire Distributors, Accredited Home Lenders, BI-LO, Bruno’s, Luckin Coffee, Libbey, RentPath, Rural/Metro, Serta Simmons Bedding, Taco Bueno, Titan Petrochemicals, and United Subcontractors.

Ed served as a managing director and then a partner at Joele Frank from 2007 to 2011 and rejoined the firm in 2016. From 2011 to 2016, he served as the chief communications officer of Warburg Pincus. In this role, he led the private equity firm’s global communications strategy and team as well as the firm’s service offering to its portfolio companies in the Americas, Europe, Middle East and Asia. He was also a member of the firm’s environmental, social and governance committee. Earlier in his career, Ed was a founding principal at Vistance Group, a corporate and financial communications advisory, and held senior roles at the international public relations firms including Hill & Knowlton and Ketchum. He is a member of the Arthur W. Page Society. Ed has lectured on communications topics at a wide variety of academic and industry functions on topics including cybersecurity incident response and activism defense. He received a bachelor of journalism degree from The University of Texas at Austin.