Fredericks said in an interview that the transfer was made possible by his former Dorsey & Whitney colleague, Richard Zakin. He added that Zakin, a lawyer-turned-headhunter, recruited him for the position at Jenner citing the firm’s remarkable reputation in the legal profession. “Jenner has a strong national platform and extraordinarily strong talent and strength of deal flow.”
Joseph Gromacki, the chair of the Jenner & Block’s corporate practice and co-chair of the securities practice, said that the firm aims to expand the corporate practice in its New York office, which is known to be litigation-heavy. He also expressed his excitement over Fredericks’ arrival. “Wesley’s practice was a very nice fit for us. We have a lot of [corporate] activity in New York, but not a lot of lawyer residents there.”
Fredericks’ areas of practices include corporate governance, finance, regulatory compliance and domestic and international M&A transactions. In the recent years, he has been part of some of the most significant cases in the legal industry. Fredericks was the representative of Thornburg Mortgage Inc. when the company was sold for $1.3 billion in convertible notes to a syndicate led by MatlinPatterson Global Advisers and an operating unit of Johnson & Johnson by a Scandanavian health products company, Svenska Cellulosa Aktiebolaget.