Ira L. Kotel

Ira L. Kotel is a Partner and a member of Dentons' Corporate and Venture Technology and Emerging Growth Companies groups. His primary practice area is Mergers and Acquisitions.

His practice encompasses all major transactional areas, including mergers and acquisitions, public and private securities offerings, venture capital transactions, joint ventures and strategic alliances, technology licensing, structured and project finance, general contract negotiation, and general corporate advice.

He regularly serves as outside general counsel to numerous emerging growth and middle market companies, overseeing their day-to-day corporate counselling needs and providing strategic and transactional advice on major business transactions for clients both domestically and internationally.

He has extensive experience representing a wide variety of issuers, placement agents, underwriters and investors in numerous private placement and public offering transactions. He regularly advises companies in the telecommunications, technology, mobile, software, marketing, private equity, venture capital, financial, biotechnology and medical device industries. He is also a leader of the Dentons SPAC practice, representing SPACs in their IPOs and target companies in their business combinations.

In addition to preparing related offering documents, Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and NASDAQ Stock Market filings and listing applications, and assisting in due diligence, he is often engaged in addressing significant issues with SEC and Financial Industry Regulatory Authority (FINRA) regulators and representatives of the NYSE and NASDAQ.

He has represented major investment banking firms and corporations in connection with mergers and acquisitions, and is a frequent speaker on legal and business issues at industry conferences for the finance, technology and life sciences sectors.

He has co-authored numerous Dentons publications, including "Delaware Supreme Court Reverses Chancery Court, Applies Business Judgment Rule in TripAdvisor Redomestication Case" (February 2025), "Analysis – U.S. Exchanges Overhaul Bid Price Compliance Rules – Tougher Rules During Tougher Times" (October 2024), "Delaware Court of Chancery Strikes Down Elon Musk's $55.8 Billion Equity Compensation Package from Tesla" (February 2024) and "SEC Adopts New SPAC and de-SPAC Rules" (January 2024).

He contributes his services on a pro bono basis and devotes a portion of his practice to not-for-profit entity formation and organisational matters. He is a member of the American Bar Association and the Association of the Bar of the City of New York.

He holds a JD from Columbia Law School (1989), where he was a James A. Elkins Scholar and a member of the Columbia Business Law Review, and an AB, summa cum laude, from Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey (1986).