ED NORRIS practices primarily in the area of federal business taxation, focusing on the planning and implementation of complicated, tax-intensive transactions. He has extensive experience in resolving the complex tax issues presented by large business transactions, especially acquisitions, joint ventures, and financing transactions relating to the motion picture, technology, life sciences, real estate, financial services, and energy industries.
Ed has been heavily involved in inbound and outbound international transactions for more than 40 years. For over 30 years, he has advised a major motion picture studio in connection with a variety of domestic and international joint ventures, film financing transactions, acquisitions, and dispositions. Ed has been the studio’s outside counsel principally responsible for the design and implementation of a complex international joint venture for the production and distribution of more than US$7 billion of theatrical motion pictures. Ed also advises numerous other clients in the entertainment, media, and sports fields regarding complex international and domestic tax issues.
Ed provides tax advice to large domestic and offshore hedge funds, private equity funds, and real estate funds, including counseling them regarding formation and operational issues and assisting them with the structuring of a wide variety of alternative investment transactions.
Ed’s work also encompasses large technology transactions, including recent acquisitions and ventures relating to cybersecurity and other internet businesses, pharmaceutical compounds, and other intellectual property. He also handles large real estate joint ventures, including transactions involving hotels, gaming, and multi-use properties.
Ed has lectured on a variety of federal and state tax matters, has authored numerous tax articles, and has taught a law school course on international business transactions. He is recognized in the 2020–2024 editions of Chambers USA for California: Southern Tax, with clients stating that “he’s very practical, smart and focused on the main issues” (2023).