Edgar Ancona

Practice Areas

Mergers and Acquisitions

Career

Edgar Ancona is a counsel in the Mexico City Office. His practice focuses on mergers, acquisitions, private equity, spin-offs, joint ventures, strategic alliances, minority investments and asset sales.

Edgar joined Creel in 2014. He worked as a foreign associate in the New York office of Kirkland & Ellis LLP in the class of 2015-2016. He re-joined Creel in late 2016. He received his law degree from Universidad Panamericana (Guadalajara) in 2009 and his LL.M. degree from the New York School of Law in 2014.

He has represented multiple strategic clients such as McCormick, Bristol-Myers Squibb, IBM, Siemens and GE Capital in their acquisitions, sales or divestitures of Mexican companies or assets, as well as multiple global and local private equity funds, such as Blackstone, CDPQ, OTPP and Cascade Investment and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation.

Some representative strategic M&A transactions include acting as counsel to Bristol-Myers Squibb in its asset sale of over-the-counter medicine portfolio (Picot, Tempra IV and Graneodine) to Reckitt Benckiser. In restructuring M&A transactions, representing Altán in its primary issuance and sale of shares to Mexican development banks Bancomext, Nafin and Bonobras, as part of Altán's pre-pack plan to exit insolvency (the transaction was named the 2023 “International Turnaround Transaction of the Year” by TMA). In private equity, representing CDPQ in its purchase and primary subscription of shares of leading clinic diagnosis group, Grupo Diagnóstico Aries (GDA); and then as lead counsel to GDA in its first cross-border purchase of Florida-based Access Medical Labs.

In the public-to-public arena, representing home-building company Vinte in its tender offer to acquire up to 100% of the shares of Javer; Terrafina and its special committee in the landmark US$1.5 billion unsolicited tender offer from Prologis, including in the assessment of other competing tender offers and business combination proposals from Blackstone, Macquarie, Funo and Fibra Monterrey; Southern Cross Group in the negotiations of a sale and tender of a controlling interest in shopping-malls developer Planigrupo, as part of the tender offer launched by Grupo Mexico; and prior to that, Southern Cross Group in the unsolicited offer of Acosta Verde to conduct a merger of equals with Planigrupo. Edgar represented the French financial development institution Proparco, and then the Danish Investment Fund for Developing Countries (IFU) in each of their PIPEs and primary subscriptions as part of a rights offering of Vinte.

Edgar also represented Grupo Axo in joint venture with off-price department store T.J. Maxx, Fillip Holdings in its joint venture with TKO’s World Wrestling Entertainment (WWE) to acquire the AAA lucha libre wrestling business in Mexico and Playtech in its joint venture with Grupo Caliente to operate the online betting platform Caliente.mx.

Since 2023, Edgar has been cited as up and coming lawyer by Chambers and Partners, and The Legal 500. In 2024, The Legal 500 also named Edgar the Rising Star of the Year – M&A (High-End).

Mr. Ancona belongs to the Kirkland & Ellis and NYU alumni associations.

His native language is Spanish, and he is fluent in English.