Ezra Borut is a corporate partner based in New York and a member of the firm’s Mergers & Acquisitions Group.
Mr. Borut regularly represents private equity and corporate clients in a broad range of U.S. domestic and cross-border transactions, including acquisitions, divestitures, joint ventures, and restructurings.
He is also a leader of the firm’s Private Fund Transactions Group, where he advises secondaries fund sponsors, sovereign wealth funds and other investors on a variety of transactions, including secondary transactions, bespoke joint ventures and co-investments. He has advised on transactions across a range of industries, with particular experience in the industrials, chemicals and materials, energy and natural resources sectors. Mr. Borut was resident in the firm’s Tokyo office for four years, where he served as the managing partner of the office. Prior to residence in Tokyo, he was based in the firm’s New York office, where he served on the firm’s Management Committee for three years and served as Deputy Chair of the firm’s Corporate Department and Co-Chair of the firm’s Diversity Committee.
Mr. Borut is a frequent author and speaker on transactional topics, as well as alternative asset and secondaries market trends. Recent publications include “FDI scrutiny of private equity secondary deals on the rise,” Westlaw Today (June, 2024); “ILPA Publishes New Guidance on Continuation Funds” (Debevoise Client Update, June 2023), a review of the secondaries market as part of Debevoise’s Private Equity Report – 2023 Outlook (January, 2023); “Navigating the Nuances of Continuation Funds” (Debevoise Client Update, December 2020); and “Private Equity Options in Face of Liquidity Crunch” (CLS Blue Sky Blog, May 2020).
Mr. Borut was an intern in the law firm of Nishimura & Partners (now Nishimura & Asahi) in Tokyo from June to December 1998. Mr. Borut joined Debevoise in 1996. He received his B.A. cum laude from Yale University in 1991, where he majored in East Asian Studies with a Japanese concentration. He received his J.D. with honors from The University of Chicago Law School in 1996, where he served as a topic access editor on the Law Review. Mr. Borut is a recipient of the Lawyers Alliance for New York 2013 Cornerstone Award and sits on the Pro Bono Committee.