Ervin Cohen & Jessup Taps Top-of-Field Corporate, Tax Attorneys For Leadership! Vanja Habekovic and Chris Manderson Now Co-Lead The Firm’s Business, Corporate and Tax Department

Ervin Cohen & Jessup announces today that Partners Vanja Habekovic and Chris Manderson will serve as co-chairs of its Business, Corporate and Tax department.

The department advises clients on a comprehensive range of transactional, tax, governance, finance and operational issues. ECJ lawyers provide strategic guidance to clients through all stages of growth, from start-up and growth phases through succession and exit.

The newly elevated co-chairs specialize in mergers and acquisitions, venture capital, debt and equity financing, corporate governance and restructuring.

Randall S. Leff, the firm’s co-managing partner said, “Vanja and Chris are clear picks for leadership given the diversity of their experience and level of respect in the Southern California legal profession and within the firm. Each is at the top of their field, and between them they’ve guided clients through just about any issue they’ll ever face in the business, corporate and tax realm. “Our goal as a firm is to ensure that no client ever has to look elsewhere after coming to us - we have experts for issues of every size, from start to finish. I can imagine no two attorneys, leading in tandem, that could deliver better on that mission.”

Vanja Habekovic was recognized earlier this year by the Los Angeles Business Journal as one of Los Angeles’ top business leaders as part of its annual Women’s Leadership Awards. The organization honored her as a “Woman to Watch” in a previous, special edition. Best Lawyers in America also named her to its 2023 list. Vanja’s clients rely on her dynamic counsel to establish, grow, maintain and sell their businesses and to navigate the important tax consequences that arise when making deals.

Chris Manderson has led negotiations on behalf of a number of California’s top companies in technology, venture capital, private equity and public markets, among many others. Prominent clients have included Miso Robotics, Inc., Morgan Stanley & Co., Dole Food Company, and Amgen Inc. Separately, as an advisor in distressed and restructuring-driven M&A transactions, he has reorganized companies preserving over $2 billion of net operating loss carryforward “NOL” tax assets.