Nicolai M. Schwarz-Gondek is a partner in the Century City office of Sidley Austin LLP, where his practice focuses on private equity, mergers and acquisitions, and other complex corporate transactions. Mr. Schwarz-Gondek regularly represents private equity sponsors, family offices, and other institutional investors in connection with mergers, stock and asset acquisitions and divestitures, and leveraged and management buyouts. Mr. Schwarz-Gondek also advises target and acquiring companies (including the portfolio companies of private equity firms) on a broad range of merger and acquisition transactions.  

Before joining Sidley Austin LLP, Mr. Schwarz-Gondek was a partner in the Private Equity and M&A practice groups of O'Melveny & Myers LLP in Century City.  Prior thereto, Mr. Schwarz-Gondek was a shareholder in the Corporate practice group of Stradling Yocca Carlson & Rauth, P.C. in Santa Monica and practiced in the Corporate Department of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in Los Angeles and in the Mergers and Acquisitions and Public Company Advisory groups of Weil, Gotshal & Manges LLP in New York. 

Mr. Schwarz-Gondek holds a Master of Laws (LL.M.) from the University of Southern California and received a Doctor Iuris (PhD equivalent), summa cum laude, from the University of Augsburg with a doctoral thesis on German tax law. Mr. Schwarz-Gondek is also a graduate of Ludwig-Maximilians-University in Munich, where he completed his First State Examination (JD equivalent) and obtained his Diplom-Jurist (Univ.), and spent one year as a visiting scholar at the University of Geneva in Switzerland with a scholarship from the German Academic Exchange Service.

In addition to his practice, Mr. Schwarz-Gondek is a lecturer in law at the University of Southern California Gould School of Law and serves as Co-Director of the Los Angeles Warburg Chapter of the American Council on Germany.