Stephen B. Ballas

STEPHEN BALLAS represents financial and strategic investors in their structured, special situations, hybrid-capital and joint venture investments and M&A. His practice includes both buy- and sell-side private as well as public company M&A, financings, and general corporate matters. He has experience in complex, cross-border transactions that include acquisitions, dispositions, carveouts, ABCs, public company “take private” transactions, and debt and equity financings, as well as in liability management, structured equity, and distressed investment transactions.

His clients have included specialty finance, private credit, private equity, hedge, and sovereign wealth funds as well as public- and privately-held companies that invest in and operate across a variety of industries. These industries include financial services; investment management; real estate and real estate services; consumer retail; aviation; manufacturing; satellite telecommunications; media and entertainment; software and technology; advertising; biopharma and life sciences; automotive and mobility; and sustainable energy. Stephen has advised on complex corporate governance matters that involve shareholder activism and regulatory and criminal investigations as well as U.S. national security reviews.

Stephen’s work has earned him recognition in The Best Lawyers in America® for Securities/Capital Markets Law (2026).

Prior to joining Sidley, Stephen was a general counsel as well as a deputy general counsel at multinational public companies.

• Represented a U.S.-based life-sciences company in its acquisition of an Israel-based medical-device company.
• Represented a software company in the sale of its agricultural-drone-spraying operations.
• Represented a private credit investor in its purchase of a consumer manufacturing company in an “assignment for the benefit of creditors” (ABC) transaction.
• Represented remote-desktop-technology startup Phaze in its series-seed venture financing.
• Represented a member of the investor group in Hudson’s Bay Company (the parent company of Saks Fifth Avenue) in its acquisition and related financing of Neiman Marcus Group.
• Publicly-registered healthcare-focused American Healthcare REIT (AHR) in its acquisition of NorthStar Healthcare Income’s (NHI) interest in an AHR-NHI joint venture that owns an operator of purpose-built integrated senior healthcare campuses in the United States.
• Advise a private credit investor in its debt- and equity-recapitalization and investment transactions, including in an artificial-intelligence and data-storage provider; a shipyard site servicing the U.S. military; and a drilling-service provider servicing the upstream oil-and-gas industry.
• Private credit investor Magnetar Capital in numerous debt and equity investment and joint venture transactions, including in residential-mortgage-origination platforms, business-purpose loan and other lending platforms, cryptocurrency mining, music rights and royalties, resort timeshares, and agricultural technology, as well as in listed and unlisted REITs and other real estate ventures focused on self-storage as well as on affordable, multi-family, student, and recreational-vehicle and manufactured housing.
• A Middle East sovereign wealth fund in its investment in a large, U.S.-based, international luxury retailer.
• Venture capital investor Northpond Ventures in its PIPE investment in Telesis Bio, a public biopharma company.
• United Airlines in its joint venture and investment transactions in sustainable aviation fuel production and related technologies.
• Private capital investor Callodine Group in its public company “take private” of investment and wealth management firm Manning & Napier.
• Gaming technology provider Parsec Cloud in its sale to public company Unity Software.
• Software provider StructionSite in its sale to privately-held aerial-reality-capture firm DroneDeploy
• Private equity investor Brand Velocity in its acquisition of SCORE Sports, a designer and manufacturer of youth team sports uniforms and equipment.
• Publicly traded aviation-and-maritime-technology provider Global Eagle (now Anuvu) in multiple M&A, joint venture, and investment transactions.
• UBS Asset Management’s Hedge Fund Solutions business in its PIPE investment for a SPAC business combination transaction involving Software Acquisition Group Inc. III and Nogin.
• A large U.S. asset manager in multiple GP-led secondary and continuation-fund transactions.
• IT-design and firmware-company Arrive Technologies in its sale to Inphi Corporation.
• Ad-tech company Empyr in its sale to loyalty-platform-company Augeo.
• An aviation parts manufacturer on an “outside general counsel” basis for all of its corporate, commercial and litigation matters.
• Real estate services provider CBRE in 20+ U.S. and foreign acquisitions of engineering services, brokerage, valuation, capital markets, facilities management, property management, and investment management platforms, including its acquisitions of Johnson Controls’ Global Workplace Solutions business and of ING Bank’s global real estate investment management platform.
• Hedge-fund TPG-Axon Capital in numerous PIPE, M&A, joint-venture, and investment transactions, including in real estate, pharmaceuticals, bank-holding companies, and complex structured financial products.
• The Special Committee of the Board of Directors of publicly-registered healthcare-focused Griffin-American Healthcare REIT III (now American Healthcare REIT) in its management-internalization transaction.
• Fund manager Sound Point Capital Management in its purchase of CVC Credit’s U.S. direct-lending business.
• Fund manager Savant Growth in its spinout from Kennet Partners’ U.S. venture business.
• Fund-sponsor Hellman & Friedman in its public company “take-private” of digital-marketing-technology company DoubleClick.
• Digital marketing technology company DoubleClick in its sale to Google.
• Private equity firm Elevation Partners in its PIPE investment in real estate technology company Homestore.
• Private equity firm Lightyear Capital in numerous M&A transactions, including in the consumer retail and financial services sectors.

*Some of the above matters were handled prior to joining Sidley.

Stephen has represented pro-bono clients in asylum petitions as well as veterans in their discharge-upgrade proceedings before U.S. military-review boards.