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Uber's $2.3B EzCater Buy targets the booming catering market. 0 Comments Uber is making a major move beyond the individual meal order, announcing plans to acquire catering platform ezCater in a $2.3 billion all-cash transaction that brings together two powerful food-delivery networks. The deal, unveiled Tuesday, was assembled with legal guidance from three law firms as Uber looks to combine ezCater's business-to-business catering expertise with the enormous consumer and restaurant reach of Uber Eats. Under the agreement, Covington & Burling LLP advised Uber, while Freshfields LLP provided counsel to Uber on global antitrust matters. Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP represented ezCater. The proposed acquisition would give Uber another route into the corporate food market while giving ezCater access to Uber's global ecosystem of customers, restaurants and couriers. Uber bets big on business catering. EzCater is a food technology company that helps organizations manage workplace and event food needs. Its platform allows customers to order from more than 140,000 restaurants across the country, according to the companies. Its services cover employee meal programs, meetings, events and recurring enterprise catering needs. The platform also provides tools designed to help organizations manage orders and track food spending. The numbers behind the business show why Uber sees an opportunity. EzCater generated more than $2.5 billion in gross bookings over the past 12 months, giving Uber a sizable business operation to fold into its food ecosystem. EzCater CEO welcomes Uber deal. EzCater CEO Nihad Rahman said the company is ready to join forces with Uber after building what he described as a leading workplace catering platform and an important growth channel for restaurant partners. Rahman said ezCater's catering and business-to-business expertise will now be brought into Uber's broader network of customers, merchants and couriers. The combination could create a new engine for growth: restaurants could gain access to larger catering orders and additional diners, while customers could have a more dependable way to arrange food for groups. Uber sees catering as a major revenue opportunity. Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi said catering represents a significant business opportunity and can provide restaurants with an important source of revenue. He praised Rahman and the ezCater team for building the platform and said Uber's scale could expose the service to millions of additional customers. The strategy effectively puts Uber's enormous delivery infrastructure behind a business where orders can be much larger than the typical individual meal. Instead of one dinner arriving at one doorstep, a single catering order can feed an entire office, meeting or event. That potential makes the ezCater acquisition an important extension of Uber's existing food-delivery business. Three law firms guide $2.3 billion transaction. The transaction is also drawing attention for the legal work behind the deal. Covington's team advising Uber was led by partners John Fisher and Tomas Rua. Freshfields handled global antitrust matters for Uber, with partner Mary Lehner leading that team. Davis Polk advised ezCater, although complete information about the firm's legal team was not immediately available Tuesday. Deal expected to close in coming months. The Uber's $2.3B EzCater Buy is expected to close in the coming months, subject to customary closing conditions. If completed, the transaction will bring ezCater's specialized corporate catering platform under Uber's expanding food and delivery umbrella. For Uber, the acquisition represents a push into a market where restaurant relationships, larger orders and business customers converge. For ezCater, it opens the door to Uber's global scale - potentially transforming a specialized catering platform into a much larger piece of the food-delivery giant's business.

Erin Piacenti, killed in Times Square stabbing, was a 'superstar' at Bank of America known for mentoring junior teammates. Alice Tecotzky Sat, September 5, 2026 at 2:43 AM PDT * Erin Piacenti, who was killed in Times Square on Monday, was known as a mentor at Bank of America. * Colleagues remembered her not only for her sharp legal mind, but love of books, Disney, and family. * Piacenti's boss remembers describing her as a 'superstar' to senior management before her death. When Erin Piacenti walked into Bank of America on Monday after five months on maternity leave, she found pink daisies sitting on her desk. Welcome signs were strung around the office she shared with a few teammates. Piacenti showed them photos of Madison, her newborn daughter, before settling in to read case law. That afternoon, Piacenti was fatally stabbed in Times Square in what police described as an unprovoked attack. She was 32. Though Piacenti only started as a vice president in the firm's Americas Business Selection and Conflicts group around 18 months ago, she'd already made an impact on the small team. Hallie Ziesmer, the head of the roughly 20-person group, described Piacenti as a "superstar" in conversations with senior management before her death, and remembers interviewing Piacenti at the end of 2024. "It was probably one of the shortest interviews, because I think within three minutes I wanted to hire her," Ziesmer, who was Piacenti's direct boss, said on Friday. "She was obviously very intelligent, very capable. She was polished but down-to-earth." Piacenti was attacked by Pamela Cisneros, 49, who also injured another victim before officers shot her and killed her at the scene. There's been a wave of support on and beyond Wall Street since the event, and a GoFundMe to help her daughter has raised more than $800,000. Many Bank of America employees have contributed, a spokesperson for the bank said. Before joining Bank of America, Piacenti worked at the law firm Davis Polk for more than three years, focusing on mergers and acquisitions for part of that time. She started her career as a buyer at Bloomingdale's and graduated magna cum laude from Fordham Law. Piacenti had a niche focus at the bank, helping investment bankers prepare disclosure documents for companies gearing up for an M&A transaction and clients navigate a thicket of regulations. A colleague remembers her as resourceful, always finding creative solutions on her own. Piacenti would mentor more junior teammates who didn't have the same legal expertise, Ziesmer said. Many of them have spent time in Ziesmer's office this week, remembering how detailed and caring Piacenti was with her help. One junior employee who sat across from Piacenti said in an email that she reviewed much of their work, and had offered personal advice on top of professional tips during their occasional coffees. "She could have, on some days, left the office to be home, but she would spend time with juniors. She wanted them to understand and share a passion for what she was doing. She really enjoyed it," Ziesmer said. Piacenti would often talk about visiting her four younger siblings, or books, or Disney. When the team attended a cooking class last year, the same colleague who admired Piacenti's resourcefulness said she made the best dish (and helped save them, an inadequate chef). When another colleague ran into her on the Q train one morning, she was thrilled to introduce them to her husband, Frank, whom she talked about all the time. Around the holidays, Piacenti brought dozens of cookies into the office after she and Frank hosted the family's Christmas cookie party at their new home in New Jersey. Ziesmer says the team now plans to bring in cookies every year.

Davis Polk & Wardwell has hired Todd B. Kornreich as a partner in its Mergers & Acquisitions practice in New York. Kornreich joins from Ropes & Gray, where he was a partner in the private equity transactions group and co-lead of the transportation and logistics sector. Kornreich advises private equity sponsors and their portfolio companies on domestic and cross-border transactions, including leveraged buyouts, take-private acquisitions, corporate carve-outs, divestitures and strategic investments. He has particular expertise in the industrials and manufacturing, transportation and logistics, and healthcare services and technology sectors. Kornreich received his J.D. from Cornell Law School in 2012 and his B.A. from the University of Pennsylvania in 2008.