Robin Panovka

Robin Panovka has been a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz since 1993, focusing on M&A, strategic transactions and corporate governance in the United States and in cross-border transactions.

He co-chairs the firm’s top-ranked Real Estate and REIT M&A groups, which are consistently at the forefront of major transactions in the public REIT, real estate, hospitality and gaming industries, including many of the largest and most complex mergers, buyouts, takeovers and spinoffs over the last decade. He also advises on city-building and major development projects, including the redevelopment of the World Trade Center in Manhattan. See Real Estate M&A Practice for representative transactions.

Robin has been named one of the Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in the U.S., and is consistently ranked as one of the leading M&A and REIT lawyers by Chambers, Legal 500, Who’s Who Legal and similar publications. He has been featured in a number of publications for his leadership in these fields, including Lawdragon Magazine and as an American Lawyer “Dealmaker”, and in 2015 received New York University’s Urban Leadership Award.

He is the co-author of “REITs: Mergers and Acquisitions,” a leading treatise published by Law Journal Press, and has authored many articles and papers on related subjects. He is co-chair of the NYU REIT Center and has served as an adjunct professor at Columbia Business and Law Schools and in NYU’s Masters in Real Estate Program. He is a founding director of the International Institute for the Study of Cross-Border M&A (XBMA), a joint venture among Peking University, Cambridge and NYU. He lectures frequently, including chairing annual conferences for the NYU REIT Center, Practising Law Institute and XBMA. He is also active on a number of educational and non-profit boards, including the boards of Duke Law School and NYU’s Real Estate Institute; is a fellow of the American Bar Foundation and the American College of Real Estate Lawyers; and serves on the Cornell University Council.

Robin was heavily involved in the redevelopment of the World Trade Center for more than a decade following its destruction on September 11, 2001, including negotiating the master plan and “footprint swap” which paved the way to rebuilding, as chronicled in the Cornell Real Estate Review, American Lawyer Magazine and other publications.

He holds degrees from Cornell University and Duke Law School. He grew up in South Africa and Israel and currently lives in Manhattan.