Benjamin P. Damsky
Partner
bdamsky@blaistaxlaw.com
+1 (617) 918-7084
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“We’re doing deals every day. We know the tax points in an M&A transaction from all angles and how the different players will perceive them – buyers, sellers, investors, management, banks. We love being brought into a deal when the client needs to match the tax firepower found at the world’s preeminent law firms.”
Ben’s practice focuses on the tax aspects of mergers and acquisitions and other strategic transactions. He regularly represents growth companies, along with their founders and investors, throughout their life cycle from formation to exit. Ben is equally active on the buy-side, regularly assisting his middle market private equity clients and other institutional investors and their portfolio companies in acquisitions and dispositions. He has deep experience drafting and negotiating the technical provisions of transaction agreements opposite the country’s largest and best-known law firms. As lead tax counsel on dozens of M&A transactions annually, both buyers and sellers come to Ben to provide creative and uncompromising tax support on their most important and high-stakes transactions.
While previously practicing at Ropes & Gray, Ben helped advise some of the world’s largest private equity funds and hedge funds, the nation’s preeminent universities, and large U.S. and non-U.S. public and private companies in mergers and acquisitions and other important tax-related matters.
Ben has a degree in economics and philosophy from the University of Rochester (B.A. 2006 magna cum laude) where he was the recipient of several awards for excellence in economics and graduated with highest honors in philosophy. He has a J.D. from the Boston University School of Law (2009 cum laude) where he was a member of the Law Review. Ben is originally from Connecticut and currently lives in Cambridge, Massachusetts with his wife, Laurie, and two children.
Honors, Awards, & Memberships
Ranked, Tax Law, Massachusetts, Chambers (2022-2024).
Super Lawyers Rising Star (2017-2024).
Publications
“Pigeonholing the ‘SAFE’ and ‘KISS'”, Tax Notes, May 7, 2018.
About Blais HALPERT TAX PARTNERS LLP:
Blais Halpert Tax Partners LLP is a transactional tax boutique focused on tax-sensitive structuring and implementation of high-value business transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, growth company startup and financing, private equity and venture capital investments, fund formations, real estate, and executive compensation arrangements. We help structure, negotiate, and draft to ensure the most tax-efficient achievement of our clients’ objectives.
We are fluent in the most important business entities, from C and S corporations to partnerships and LLCs to investment and grantor trusts. Much of our work is international in nature, advising on cross-border acquisitions, sales, and investments.
A cornerstone of our practice is serving as tax co-counsel to corporate lawyers and non-U.S. law firms who need top-tier U.S. tax support for their clients’ business transactions. We regard our co-counsel as our partners in delivering seamless, practical, efficient, and valuable service to clients. Our practice is nationwide and we work regularly wherever one finds fast-growing and middle market companies, including Boston, New York, Miami, Chicago, Austin, Denver/Boulder, and Silicon Valley. In our international practice, our clients are from, or expanding to, diverse locales, including Toronto, London, Moscow, Mumbai, Hong Kong, and Melbourne.
We offer a unique value proposition in providing sophisticated transactional tax advice to the middle market, which is underserved by many of the “specialty” law areas. We bring expertise, efficiency, an understanding of how tax advice integrates with non-tax legal and business objectives, and most of all, the ability to communicate tax law to non-tax lawyers and business clients.