David A. Katz is a partner at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in New York City, an adjunct professor at the New York University (NYU) School of Law, and chair of the board of advisors of the NYU Law Institute for Corporate Governance and Finance. Katz is a corporate attorney focusing on mergers and acquisitions (M&A), corporate governance, shareholder activism, and complex securities transactions. He has been involved in many major domestic and international merger, acquisition, and buyout transactions; strategic defense assignments and proxy contests; and a number of complex public and private offerings and corporate restructurings. He frequently counsels boards of directors and board committees on corporate governance matters and crisis management.

Katz is co-chair of the Tulane Corporate Law Institute, teaches courses on corporate governance and M&A at NYU School of Law and previously co-taught joint law and business short courses at the Vanderbilt Law School and Owen School of Management with former Delaware Chief Justice Leo Strine, who is now of counsel at Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz.

The American Lawyer has chosen him as one of the 45 highest-performing members of the private bar under the age of 45 as well as a “Dealmaker of the Year” three times. He has been named “Lawyer of the Year” by the Global M&A Network as well as the Lexology Index’s (formerly Who’s Who Legal) “Mergers and Acquisitions Lawyer of the Year,” “Corporate Governance Lawyer of the Year,” and “Corporate Governance and M&A Lawyer of the Year” multiple times. Katz was elected by the American College of Governance Counsel as an inaugural class fellow and is a member of The American Law Institute, where he is an adviser on the Restatement of the Law, Corporate Governance project. Finally, he has been named to the NACD Directorship 100™ numerous times.[MS1] 

Katz serves as a member of the board of trustees at NYU (executive vice chair), NYU Langone Health System, and NYU School of Law. He also regularly writes a column on corporate governance for the New York Law Journal with his colleague Laura McIntosh. Katz is a member of the American Bar Association (ABA) section on business law, where he founded the committee on mergers and acquisitions task force on the Dictionary of M&A Terms and a member of the committee on mergers and acquisitions subcommittee for acquisitions of public companies. Katz is also a member of the ABA federal securities laws committee, the New York State Bar Association, the Association of the Bar of the City of New York, the Society for Corporate Governance, and the NACD.

Katz is a graduate of Brandeis University and NYU School of Law.