BakerHostetler Deepens Mergers and Acquisitions and Private Equity Bench With Addition of Four Partners in New York

NEW YORK--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct 16, 2025--

BakerHostetler:

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Key takeaways

Why this matters
BakerHostetler is pleased to announce the firm has added a significant team of four partners in New York to its Mergers and Acquisitions, Private Equity and Debt Finance teams.

The group’s arrival adds significant depth to BakerHostetler’s Business Practice Group in New York and its firmwide Mergers & Acquisitions and Private Equity teams. The group continues BakerHostetler’s focus on offering top-of-class representation of financial and strategic buyers and sellers in middle-market M&A transactions.

Key quotes
“Increasing our transactional capabilities in key markets like New York is a strategic firm priority. We are delighted to welcome this sophisticated team of partners that will add to our market-leading M&A, Private Equity and Debt Finance teams in New York,” said Paul Schmidt, chairman of BakerHostetler.

“The addition of these exceptional lawyers to our Business Practice Group demonstrates the substantial investment the firm continues to make in our New York Office,” said George Stamboulidis, managing partner of BakerHostetler’s New York office. “We’ve added more than 100 lawyers to our ranks in New York in the past 15 years.”

“BakerHostetler advises on hundreds of middle-market deals each year for our private equity and strategic clients. Our teams are currently very busy as the middle market has significantly picked up in the second half of 2025. We are thrilled to add Andy, Steve, Josh and Henry’s practices to our existing M&A and Private Equity teams as we continue to expand our team of partners that delivers top-of-market client services and handles our clients’ most complex transactions,” said John Allotta, chair of BakerHostetler’s Business Practice Group.

“Andy, Steve, Josh and Henry are widely respected and talented dealmakers, and this group of partners will be a terrific addition to our practice. We are committed to providing quality and nuanced advice to our clients as they navigate a rapidly shifting business environment. The group’s impressive history of successfully managing complex transactions enhances our position as one of the premier middle-market M&A firms in the U.S.,” added Steven Goldberg, co-leader of BakerHostetler’s Mergers and Acquisitions team.

Arsiotis is an accomplished corporate attorney who focuses his practice on mergers and acquisitions, private investment funds and corporate finance matters for private equity funds, family offices, venture capital entities and their portfolio companies. Clients across the manufacturing, technology and software, financial services and health care industries seek his counsel in a broad spectrum of commercial transactions, such as joint ventures, partnerships, private equity deals, business combinations, leveraged buyouts, mezzanine debt financings, startup formations, financing activities and corporate restructurings. He is also adept at guiding clients through equity and debt investments and corporate governance issues.

Arsiotis earned a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law and a B.A. from Stony Brook University.

For more than two decades, Rockoff has been advising both borrowers and lenders across a broad spectrum of domestic and cross-border debt financing transactions, with a strong focus on representing private equity firms, financial sponsors, corporate borrowers, family offices, banks, hedge funds and other financial institutions. Steve is well-versed in handling matters involving leveraged buyouts and acquisition financings; senior secured lending, including first and second lien credit facilities and asset-based lending; mezzanine debt; working capital facilities; and term loans.

Rockoff earned a J.D. from Fordham University School of Law and a B.A. from Stony Brook University.

Saidlower has a broad corporate practice, focusing on mergers and acquisitions, debt and equity financing and general corporate matters for clients in the technology, manufacturing, distribution, construction, health and wellness, and financial and professional services industries. He represents buyers and sellers in private mergers and acquisitions transactions, including auction sales; assists businesses (including startups and growth-stage companies) with capital raises and strategic investments; negotiates credit facilities, including term loans, revolving lines of credit and mezzanine debt financings; and selects and negotiates representation and warranty insurance policies.

Saidlower earned a J.D. from the University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School and a B.A. from Queens College.

A former assistant general counsel at a private equity firm, Zangara represents sponsors of and investors in private equity and other alternative asset investment funds, as well as family offices, focusing on mergers and acquisitions, equity finance, fund formation and general corporate counseling. He has worked on transactions across a variety of industries, including health and active living, retail, consumer products and services, manufacturing, and technology, and has aided investment management clients in connection with fund formation activities and secondary transfers. In addition to his private equity work, Zangara has extensive experience guiding operating companies and various founder and other owner groups as they navigate the process of buying and selling their businesses.

Zangara earned a J.D. from Boston University School of Law and an A.B. from Brown University.

BakerHostetler’s Business Practice Group handles thousands of corporate transactions each year. The full-service team, consisting of more than 280 attorneys in offices across the U.S., has extensive experience closing all varieties of transactions – including mergers and acquisitions and private equity, real estate, debt finance, capital markets and securities, health care and regulatory, restructuring and bankruptcy, emerging companies and venture capital, commercial transactions, and other matters central to a company’s success. A national group with a global reach, BakerHostetler’s Business Practice Group is consistently named a go-to firm by both Chambers USA and Legal 500. For more information, visit bakerlaw.com/services/business/. Connect with us on LinkedIn at @BakerHostetler, @PaulSchmidt, @JohnAllotta, @StevenGoldberg, @GeorgeStamboulidis, @AndrewArsiotis, @StevenRockoff, @JoshuaSaidlower or @HenryZangara or on the social platform X at @BakerHostetler.

About BakerHostetler
BakerHostetler helps clients around the world address their most complex and critical business and regulatory issues. Our highly ranked attorneys deliver sophisticated counsel and outstanding client service. We have six core practice groups – Business, Digital Assets and Data Management, Intellectual Property, Labor and Employment, Litigation, and Tax – and more than 1,000 lawyers coast to coast. For more information, visit bakerlaw.com.

Henry Zangara

Joshua Saidlower

Steve Rockoff

Andrew Arsiotis

MILAN (AP) — Foreign workers building the vast new U.S. consulate compound in Milan signed agreements at a Milan hotel Wednesday securing payouts averaging 45,000 euros ($50,400) each for alleged labor abuses while working for an American construction company.

More than 60 laborers, mostly from India, signed the deals Wednesday to receive their share of a 31-million-euro (nearly $35 million) settlement agreed last month with Alabama-based Caddell Construction. The signings began Tuesday.

Prosecutors say it is the largest labor settlement ever for labor exploitation in Europe.

Each worker signed a document seen by The Associated Press agreeing not to disparage Caddell and not to disclose the individual payments. Caddell said in the document that the settlement was not an admission of liability. Individual payments are to be made within 30 days of the signing.

The workers saw the potentially life-changing sum in black-and-white for the first time at the signings — with the highest reaching nearly 90,000 euros (nearly $101,000), said Francesco Brigatti, the court-appointed administrator working to return the consulate construction site to legality.

The payouts combine unpaid overtime, reimbursement for housing illegally deducted from their pay and hefty damages personally sought by investigating Prosecutor Paolo Storari, Brigatti said.

“The damages component alone amounts to 60–70% of the overtime total,” Brigatti said, well above the 10% to 30% that he said is more customary in such cases.

Dilip Ram, a 43-year-old mason from India, has worked at the Milan consulate site for more than two years. He said the money would go a long way to helping his family of five back home in the Indian state of Bihar.

“Things are better now than before … we get more rest now,” Ram said, after signing the deal. “This has led to a lot of change. This settlement will be good. Because the workers had troubles, that’s why this settlement has been applied.”

Over two days, 115 workers signed the deals, with the procedure continuing next week.

Prosecutors say workers were paid less than $2 an hour, were illegally docked money for housing and denied overtime for working up to 10 hours a day, six days a week. They also were allegedly subjected to threats and not given proper medical care when they were injured on the job. Most of the workers were from India, but also Nigeria, Kenya and Bangladesh.

Workers from India reported having to pay 5,000 euros ($5,600) to recruiters to get the jobs, but the settlement did not directly address abuses from India, where prosecutors could not investigate, officials said.

The investigation against Caddell remains open, pending the payouts which are expected to be completed by February. Two managers under investigation for extortion and facilitating illegal immigration remain under house arrest.

Caddell’s settlement includes about 11.2 million euros ($12.5 million) for Italy’s social security coffers and workplace injury insurance. Under the deal, the workers are also getting permits to work in Italy even off the Caddell site.

Caddell, a major contractor for U.S. embassies and consulates worldwide, said in June that it was cooperating fully with Italian authorities, reviewing its global subcontractors and consultancies for compliance with labor laws, and working with authorities to protect workers on the project. It has declined to comment on the settlement.

The U.S. State Department has said it is investigating the allegations made by prosecutors and that U.S. law enforcement is working with Italian authorities.

In all, nearly 480 workers can expect payouts — some 300 still working on the site, another 100 elsewhere in Italy and the rest in their home countries.

“We have asked the Indian consulate to help,” said Adelio Riva, a labor lawyer working as a consultant for the prosecutor’s office. “We are relying heavily on word-of-mouth because, as they say, ‘follow the money.’”

The signings are being followed also by three construction worker trade unions that are assisting the workers. It is a bittersweet coda to a saga that started when unions were denied access to workers at the consulate job site, erroneously citing diplomatic status, said Trinofe Radogna, an organizer for the Fenealuil construction workers union. He said the union had never been barred from informing workers of their rights in Milan, which has been undergoing a construction boom over the last two decades.

“We have never encountered a labor-exploitation system on this scale,” Radogna said.

“Here workers’ dignity was lost: they found themselves without accommodation, without meals, and they were already starting at a disadvantage because they had to pay 5,000 euros before leaving.”

AP social media producer Nandini Gupta contributed from New York.

Caddell workers gather in a hotel conference room to wait their turn to sign an agreement for compensation from the U.S. construction company Caddell as part of a settlement into illegal labor practices at a building site for a new U.S. consulate compound in Milan, Italy, Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

A worker holds his passport in a hotel conference room as he waits his turn to sign an agreement for compensation from the U.S. construction company Caddell as part of a settlement into illegal labor practices at a building site for a new U.S. consulate compound in Milan, Italy, Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

A view of the construction site of the new U.S. Consulate, in Milan, Italy, Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

Caddell workers gather in a hotel conference room to wait their turn to sign an agreement for compensation from the U.S. construction company Caddell as part of a settlement into illegal labor practices at a building site for a new U.S. consulate compound in Milan, Italy, Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)

Caddell workers gather in a hotel conference room to wait their turn to sign an agreement for compensation from the U.S. construction company Caddell as part of a settlement into illegal labor practices at a building site for a new U.S. consulate compound in Milan, Italy, Wednesday, Oct. 7, 2026. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno)