International law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP, led by Global Securities partner James H. Ball, acted as counsel to the underwriters, led by Bank of America (BofA) Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley, in the SEC registered initial public offering of 14,362,251 shares of common stock of WisdomTree Investments, Inc. (“WisdomTree”). The offering, which closed on February 8, 2012, included 1,000,000 shares offered by WisdomTree and 13,362,251 shares offered by certain selling stockholders of WisdomTree. In addition, the underwriters exercised their option in full to purchase an additional 2,154,336 shares from certain selling stockholders.
WisdomTree Investments, Inc. is a New York-based exchange-traded fund (“ETF”) sponsor and asset manager, and the only publicly-traded asset management company that focuses exclusively on ETFs. It is the seventh largest ETF sponsor in the United States with assets under management of approximately $13.6 billion as of January 27, 2012. Its shares started trading on the NASDAQ Global Market in July 2011.
Other Milbank attorneys involved in this transaction include Litigation partners Alan Stone, Chris Gaspar and Wayne Aaron, Tax partner Andrew Walker, Executive Compensation and Employee Benefits partner Paul Wessel, Global Leveraged Finance partner Mike Bellucci, Securities associates Jessica Zhou, Liz Rosado and Richard Mo and Tax associates Jonathan Grossberg and Erika Cabri.
