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Schulte Roth & Zabel and Eisenhandler & Co. Form Strategic Partnership to Provide Compensation Consulting and Legal Services to Alternative Investment Firms

via Business Wire

Schulte Roth & Zabel (“Schulte”), a leading global law firm focused on alternative investment managers, and Eisenhandler & Co. (“Eisenhandler”), a top compensation consultant to alternative investment managers, today announced the formation of a strategic partnership to better serve the alternative investment industry.

This first of its kind partnership coordinates employment and compensation consulting with related legal and tax advice to alternative investment managers.

Eisenhandler provides total reward consulting and market data through its proprietary compensation data platform called MarketLook. Schulte provides legal and tax advice on compensation and benefit plans, partnership agreements and succession plans and comprehensive employment law advice. The strength of their joint offering is that clients can receive data-driven consulting advice coordinated with the legal and tax advice necessary to implement a compensation plan, succession plan, partnership terms and other employee initiatives.

Shelley Eisenhandler, President of Eisenhandler, for more than 20 years has been at the forefront of compensation trends and data for managers of hedge, credit, private equity and real estate funds, serving hundreds of clients. Since forming Eisenhandler & Co. in 2023, she has developed its proprietary MarketLook database, which analyzes compensation data from alternative investment managers across all employee functions, levels and regions.

Schulte has one of the premier Investment Management practices in the world, built entirely around the alternative investment management industry. Schulte represents over 500 alternative investment managers on their investment fund offerings, portfolio transactions, partnership agreements, compensation plans, employment matters, sales of their businesses and succession plans.

“We have worked with Shelley for mutual clients for more than 15 years,” says David Nissenbaum, co-head of Schulte’s Investment Management practice. “When Shelley formed her own firm, it was obvious that Schulte and Eisenhandler offering our services in coordination would enable our two great practices to do an even better job for our clients.”

Shelley added, “Schulte has been an incredible partner. Their industry knowledge is second to none. We speak the same language and Schulte has enabled Eisenhandler to provide more sophisticated advice with smooth implementation in mind.”

“For compensation plans and partnership agreements, our clients will benefit from what we think is the best and broadest market intelligence available, and an integrated process of Eisenhandler’s compensation plan design with Schulte’s legal and tax implementation,” says Ian Levin, head of Schulte’s Executive Compensation practice. “Our coordinated approach takes the burden off of clients to translate input received from consultants to their lawyers, who are usually brought in late in the process and often have to send the project back to drawing board to get the legal and tax aspects right.”

“For the range of employment matters beyond compensation and partnership agreements, including restrictive covenants, separation agreements and DEI compliance, the message to clients is, ‘This is another area where we have your back’,” says Marty Schmelkin, senior partner in Schulte’s Employment Law practice focusing on the alternative investment industry. “Schulte’s business model is providing comprehensive legal coverage to alternative investment managers. Working closely with Eisenhandler gets us that much more ingrained in what is happening in executive suites across the industry.”

About the Eisenhandler – Schulte Strategic Partnership

Eisenhandler and Schulte operate separately and retain clients independently. Eisenhandler personnel are not employees of Schulte, and Schulte employees are not Eisenhandler employees. Schulte provides ongoing operational and strategic support to, and has an ownership interest in, Eisenhandler.

When desired by a client, Schulte and Eisenhandler provide a coordinated “design-through-execution” approach to projects.

Clients are free to engage Eisenhandler and/or Schulte, as they desire. Confidential client information held by Schulte and Eisenhandler is not shared with the other without the client’s written consent.

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