After recently wrapping up a secondment as general counsel at Blackstone Infrastructure while working with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett, Ravi Purohit has joined Latham & Watkins as a partner in the firm’s corporate department, the firm announced today.
The move marks a concerted expansion to further incorporate private equity and infrastructure at Latham with Purohit taking on the additional duties of serving as global vice chair of the firm’s energy & infrastructure industry group. He will also serve as a member of the mergers and acquisitions and private equity practice groups.
While Latham has done very well in the energy infrastructure space, where the firm continues to see opportunities with clients is around the infrastructure piece, especially tied to digital infrastructure and transportation, according to Justin Stolte, global chair of the energy & infrastructure and Houston-based partner.
“We are in the process of seizing this opportunity to assist these clients as they hone their focus in core areas of operations, but at the same time helping them expand to new ones,” said Stolte.
For Latham, the perspective that Purohit brings comes at a propitious time to capitalize on the growing infrastructure appetite. Purohit returned to private practice after more than a decade at the outset of the pandemic, moving to Houston to work with Simpson Thacher after working with Blackstone Infra in New York.
He first moved in-house at infrastructure investment firm Alinda Capital Partners in New York after working as an associate at Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom and earning his J.D. from Columbia Law School. After being tapped to head transactions and capital markets for Alinda, Purohit was recruited by Blackstone, where he worked as a managing director and was a founding member of the Blackstone Infra investment team.
Not many corporate attorneys boast 12 years of experience in the trenches on deal origination and transaction execution from the inside.
“We find more and more that clients are looking for attorneys who not only know the ins and outs of the law, but also really great counselors that are able to negotiate to get deals done in the right way and in a commercially reasonable way,” said Tim Fenn, managing partner of Latham’s Houston office. “Ravi is excellent at that. He has a reputation of doing that, and that makes him extremely valuable and someone that we wanted on our team.”
Encounters from Purohit’s background as an investor and in-house in particular made the switch back to private practice more enticing when the opportunity with Simpson Thacher in Houston came around.
“I thought that was an interesting move for me professionally and that I could continue to do what I like to do: deals,” said Purohit. “I could also provide the service that I thought was lacking in the space, which was a real commercial, pragmatic legal approach to solving issues.”
After a handful of months with Simpson Thacher, Blackstone called again. The infra fund’s general counsel was leaving, and the firm asked if Purohit could come back on a secondment from the partnership.
“It’s hard to say no to Blackstone,” he said with a laugh.
With this month’s move to Latham, Purohit, who will be based predominately in Houston, is determined to bring his on-the-ground understanding to further develop and grow the firm’s practice in the infrastructure private equity space.
“I think Simpson and Kirkland do it very well. This was a chance to really make another player, and it was one of those once-in-a-lifetime opportunities to be able to go to a firm like Latham – with excellent scale, magnitude, a global footprint and platform – and build something,” he said.
Latham also holds familiar faces for Purohit.
At Simpson Thacher, he sat opposite Latham in three transactions over the past year or so, including Blackstone’s sale of its stake (LW) in Cheniere to funds managed by Blackstone Infrastructure (STB) and Brookfield Infrastructure; Digital Colony’s acquisition (STB) of Landmark Dividend (LW); and Tallgrass’ take-private deal with Blackstone Infrastructure (STB) as lead investor and Enagás (LW) as co-investor.
Purohit said that beyond energy transition and renewables, he’s seeing private equity firms, institutional investors and sovereign wealth funds looking into infrastructure in general – and that’s what Latham is hoping to capture with his experiences.
Telecom and digital infrastructure, such as fiber and telecom towers and data centers, are a huge part of his business, along with transportation infrastructure around airports and railroads. And that’s not to mention his knowledge of LNG and midstream, waste companies and more.
“There’s not more than a handful of people or attorneys that have the private equity and M&A deal experience that (Ravi) has in the infrastructure space across all the different verticals,” said Fenn.
“That’s the entire spectrum of what you would want in someone focusing on infrastructure – that’s touched all the verticals. I don’t think there’s very many Ravis out there in the world, so we’re super excited to have him.”