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Meet Our Professionals

Roy L. Smart III

Partner
Business Law Department Chair
Charlotte | 704.335.9031
Fax | 704.334.4706

Skip Smart leads the firm’s Business Law Department. He provides seasoned transactional advice and corporate counseling to both private and public companies. He has an extensive mergers and acquisitions practice, and he regularly advises clients in auction-type acquisitions and divestitures, joint ventures, leveraged acquisitions and related financings, and roll-up and build-up strategies, including techniques for the efficient and cost-effective completion of serial industry-specific acquisitions.

Skip has experience advising officers and directors on a variety of corporate governance issues. He has assisted clients in the design and implementation of corporate compliance programs and represented special committees in recapitalizations and management buyouts.

He has represented clients in a wide range of industries, including specialty manufacturing, equipment rentals, telecommunications, energy, textiles, banking, and IT services.

Representative Experience

  • Acted as principal U.S. M&A and corporate counsel to a leading equipment rental business through two decades of growth, from a two-location operation to a national business with more than 450 locations.
  • Represented Sonic Financial Corporation in a transaction to take private Speedway Motorsports Inc., a publicly traded company that is a national leader in motorsports entertainment, with an enterprise value of more than $1 billion.
  • Served as lead counsel in the sale via auction of a controlling interest in a privately held specialty packaging business to a financial buyer.
  • Advised the special committee of the board of a NASDAQ-listed company in a going private sale to the company’s founder.
  • Acted as lead counsel in the reorganization of a utility client’s fiber telecommunications business into a joint venture and the sale of 50 percent of its equity to a private equity firm.
  • Represented a family-owned specialty hardware distributor in a recapitalization involving the sale of a controlling interest to an investor group.
  • Represented a NASDAQ-listed client in a series of acquisitions of call centers located in the U.S., Sweden, and Germany.

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Honors & Awards

  • The Best Lawyers in America in Corporate Law, 2006-2025; Mergers and Acquisitions Law, 2007-2025
  • The Best Lawyers in America "Lawyer of the Year" in Charlotte for Corporate Law, 2021
  • Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers in Corporate/Mergers & Acquisitions, 2011-2024
  • Business North Carolina magazine's "Legal Elite" in Corporate Counsel, 2005; Business Law, 2007, 2016, 2018
  • North Carolina Super Lawyers, 2006-2014
  • BTI Consulting Group, BTI Client Service All-Stars, 2011
  • Martindale-Hubbell AV® Preeminent™ in Business Law; Mergers and Acquisitions; Corporate Finance; Commercial Law; Acquisitions & Joint Ventures

Memberships

  • The Trust for Public Land's North Carolina Advisory Council, Member, (Chairman, 2001-2005)
  • North Carolina Bar Association, Business Law Section Council Member, 2005-2009
  • North Carolina Commission on Business Laws and the Economy, Member, 2002-2005