Etienne D. Shanon

Etienne focuses his practice on public and private company mergers and acquisitions, private equity, and general corporate and compliance matters. He also advises clients on joint ventures, strategic alliances, carve-out transactions, and private placements. Etienne advises clients across numerous industries, including energy and natural resources, media and publishing, and financial services.

Prior to joining Morgan Lewis, he worked in the corporate department of a prominent law firm in New York City, focusing on mergers and acquisitions, securities law, and corporate governance.

He is admitted to practice in New York.

• MMR Group, Inc. in its sale of the SunZia Transmission project, a 550-mile bidirectional ±525 kV high-voltage direct current transmission line between central New Mexico and south-central Arizona, with the capacity to transport up to 3,000 MW of clean, renewable energy, to Pattern Energy Group LP
• CarVal Investors in its $350 million investment in Agilitas Energy, an integrated developer, builder, owner, and operator of distributed energy storage and solar photovoltaic systems in the northeastern United States; the investment may be upsized to $650 million upon completion of certain projects
• CarVal Investors in its acquisition of a minority interest in Verogy, a vertically integrated solar developer focused on the commercial, industrial, and small utility-scale segments
• Virtu Financial in its investment in ClearList, a company providing end-to-end capital markets solutions that include primary offerings, secondary trading, and cap table management for private companies
• SVB Financial Group, Citi, Goldman Sachs, and Morgan Stanley in their joint venture with Nasdaq to establish an institutional-grade, centralized secondary trading venue for issuers, brokers, shareholders, and prospective investors of private company stock
• Goldman Sachs & Co. in the $60 million Series C financing of Lendbuzz, an artificial intelligence–based finance platform that helps consumers with thin or no credit history obtain automobile financing 
• Morgan Stanley & Co. LLC in connection with its equity investment in Vestwell Holdings Inc., a provider of cloud-based platforms for workplace savings and investment programs
• Far Peak Acquisition Corporation, a special purpose acquisition company (SPAQ), in its proposed merger with Bullish, a technology company that develops financial services for the digital assets sector, whereby Bullish will become a public company
• John Laing Group in its acquisition of a majority interest in the Buckthorn Wind Power Project and the subsequent sale of such interests to Capital Power Corp.
• Rexnord Corp., a multiplatform industrial leader, in its definitive agreement with Regal Beloit Corp. under which Rexnord will separate its Process & Motion Control (PMC) segment by way of a tax-free spinoff to Rexnord shareholders and then combine it with Regal in a Reverse Morris Trust transaction, creating a $10 billion PMC business
• Far Point Acquisition Corp., a SPAC sponsored by Dan Loeb, Third Point Capital, and Tom Farley, former president of the New York Stock Exchange, in handling all aspects of its initial business combination with Global Blue, a Silver Lake portfolio company, including counseling its board through a recommendation change and renegotiated transaction valued at more than $2 billion
• An entity owned by Diamond Communications LLC and Sculptor Capital Management Inc. in the $1.6 billion acquisition of Melody Wireless Infrastructure, a real estate investment trust (REIT) that owns a portfolio of approximately 2,300 tenanted wireless communication sites, from Melody Capital Management
• GCM Grosvenor in the acquisition of a significant ownership stake in Horizon Telecom, a provider of fiber-optic bandwidth infrastructure services