David Forney has 40 years of legal experience as a corporate lawyer after working several years as a CPA at an accounting firm. Recognized by his peers in The Best Lawyers in America® for Mergers and Acquisitions Law, David has structured, negotiated, and closed hundreds of M&A, commercial and strategic transactions. He is a sought-after business and legal counselor.
David has experience in many industries, as highlighted below. There are two industries in which David has developed particularly strong focuses: manufacturing and distribution and waste management and environmental services. In addition, David has a “transactional focus” that spans industries: bespoke, strategic joint venture (JV) transactions, particularly among competitors or related businesses.
While M&A transactions have common legal structures negotiated within the general confines of “market” terms, bespoke JV transactions are usually relatively unbound and where David finds his stride. David’s JV experience includes domestic and international strategic JV and alliance transactions for public and private companies.
Throughout his career, David has been primarily a “company side” corporate lawyer. During the course of his experience, David developed close working relationships with c-suite management, in-house counsel, in-house business development teams, internal due diligence teams, and subject matter legal experts in public companies, and in smaller nonpublic businesses. David has experience with internal approval processes, accounting and reporting matters, competition concerns, and risk tolerances unique to company-side participants. His “transaction” experience includes, JV transactions and most other forms of M&A transactions, alliance transactions, severe carve-outs, squeeze-out mergers, combined asset, stock and merger transactions, 50/50 partnerships, partnership buyouts, and “options” to acquire businesses.
Although David focuses in the manufacturing and distribution sector and the waste management and environmental services sector, David's experience over the past 40 years has spanned a broad range of industries, including aerospace, coal mining, metallurgical coke production, steel mill maintenance, software engineering, vehicle coatings for auto manufacturers, OEM product distribution, industrial explosion protection, home security monitoring, fire fighter training systems, industrial power cell components, grand prix race tracks, electric hand dryers, water filtration systems, energy conservation services, fuel cell patent portfolios, automobile manufacturers, supply chain logistics, fund-of-funds investment companies, office and storage space systems, hospital patient and property tracking systems, commercial engineering, software engineering, interstate highway paving, school bus transportation, movie theatre chains, and even the very first ice cream novelty product.
See David’s Representative Experience for more details.
- Member, District of Columbia Bar Association
- Member, Maryland Bar Association
- Member, Pennsylvania Bar Association
- Member, Virginia Bar Association
- Joint Venture Agreements: Advanced Structuring, Drafting and Negotiating Strategies; Center for Competitive Management (C4CM) Webinar.
- Structuring Successful Joint Ventures: Navigating Formation, Capital, Control and Other Complexities; Strafford Webinar.
Prior to attending law school, David practiced for several years at an accounting firm in Pittsburgh, PA as a Certified Public Accountant (CPA). David previously taught courses in accounting at Carnegie Mellon University and Point Park College as an adjunct professor and authored BNA Tax Management Portfolio 19-7, Bad Debts. Prior to joining the firm in 1988, David practiced tax and corporate law for three years at multinational American law firm in Philadelphia, PA.
For most of his adult life, David has been involved with organizations benefiting children. He is a friend and contributor to the Children's Inn on the campus of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, MD, which provides the last hope for children who have exhausted all known conventional treatments. David was also a director for the Three Rivers Young People's Orchestra in Pittsburgh for 6 years. After his personal experiences with cancer and the effects of cancer treatments, David helps raise money for The Georgetown University Lombardi Comprehensive Cancer Center in Washington, DC, including through the annual Bellringer bike ride.
