Ex-GC William Rosoff to Head Akin Gump Beijing Office

Tom Brennan

The Asian Lawyer

09-27-2012

A former general counsel for insurance brokerage Marsh & McLennan Cos. and the former RJR Nabisco Inc. has joined Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld as head of its Beijing office.

William Rosoff was most recently a mergers and acquisitions partner in the New York office of Philadelphia’s Cozen O’Connor. He joined that firm in 2009 from the New York office of O’Melveny & Myers, where he was also a partner.

Rosoff was general counsel of Marsh & McLennan from 2000 to 2004, when he resigned amid a probe by then-New York attorney general Eliot Spitzer into bid-rigging at the insurance brokerage. In 2005, Marsh & McLennan paid $850 million to settle civil fraud charges brought by Spitzer’s office.

Prior to joining Marsh & McLennan, Rosoff was a New York partner with Davis Polk & Wardwell, where he began his career in 1978. He left the firm in 1997 for a brief stint as general counsel for food-and-cigarette giant RJR Nabisco, where he oversaw that company’s breakup, including the sale of its Nabisco unit to Kraft Foods Inc. and its international tobacco division to Japan Tobacco Inc. He returned to Davis Polk in 1999.

In a statement, Akin Gump said the addition of Rosoff was another step forward in building a leading M&A practice in the region. The firm said he would be working closely with lawyers in its Hong Kong office, which opened earlier this year.

Rosoff replaces as Akin Gump Beijing office head Spencer Griffith, who is relocating to the firm’s Washington, D.C. office. 

This article originally appeared in The Asian Lawyer.