Martin Lipton

Martin Lipton was born June 22, 1931, in Jersey City, New Jersey, to a family of Jewish background. He graduated from Jersey Preparatory School in 1948. Lipton received a B.S. in economics from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania, originally planning on becoming an investment banker. However, he eventually enrolled at New York University School of Law, where he was Editor-in-Chief of the New York University Law Review (1954–1955) and earned a LL.B. in 1955. He also did further study under Adolf A. Berle at Columbia Law School.

In 1956, Lipton clerked for Edward Weinfeld at the United States District Court for the Southern District of New York. In the fall of 1958 he practiced law at Seligson, Morris & Neuburger, a ten-lawyer firm of Charles Seligson and J. Lincoln Morris, where he teamed with Leonard Rosen and George Katz, fellow NYU Law graduates. Shortly thereafter Lipton began a 20-year period as a lecturer and adjunct professor teaching corporate law and securities regulation at NYU School of Law. While at NYU Law School, Lipton joined Rosen and Katz, as well as Herbert Wachtell, to form Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz in 1965. By the early 1980s Lipton was among the dominant figures with rival lawyer Joseph Flom in mergers and acquisitions. Clients hired Lipton because Flom was on the other side, and vice versa. (Flom and Lipton were friends who lunched together once a week.)

Lipton works as a partner of Wachtell Lipton representing and advising with respect to many of the largest merger transactions, change-of-control contests and boardroom crises of the past 40 years. The firm was founded as a handshake among four friends and to this day does not have a written partnership agreement. The current 84 partners share equally on a seniority basis. Concurrently he has served as adjunct professor, alumni leader, trustee from 1972 to now and chairman of the board of trustees from 1988 to 1998 of NYU School of Law and from 1976 to now as trustee of NYU and chairman of the board of trustees from 1998 to now. In October 2015, Lipton retired as chairman when his term ended.

In 1975, Lipton represented New York City in several financial transactions, including a temporary $2.5 billion U.S. Government loan, the rollover of the then short-term City debt held by banks and the placement of $500 million of City bonds with City pension funds, that resolved the two-year financial crisis and saved the City from bankruptcy. Also, in 1975, as a trustee of the NYU School of Law, Lipton played a major role in saving NYU from its financial crisis by selling the Mueller Macaroni Company.

In 1979, Lipton was asked to take a leave of absence from Wachtell Lipton and voluntarily serve as special counsel to the Energy Department, and then in 1980 to serve as the acting first general counsel of the Synthetic Fuels Corporation.

In 1988, Lipton was elected chair of the NYU School of Law board of trustees. Also in 1998, Lipton was elected chair of the NYU board of trustees and for the following two decades he worked first with President L. Jay Oliva and then starting in 2002 with John Sexton, who Lipton had appointed NYU president, to complete the work of making NYU the first global network university, with major campuses in Abu Dhabi, Shanghai and Florence and schools in ten other cities, with at least one on every continent. In addition in 2013 NYU completed the merger of Polytechnic University to create the NYU Polytechnic School of Engineering.