Arthur Fleischer

Arthur Fleischer Jr., an art-loving lawyer who for decades was one of the leading deal makers in corporate mergers, died on March 21 2025 at his home in Manhattan. He was 92. Over a 65-year career at the firm that became known as Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson, where he eventually served as co-chairman, Mr. Fleischer became one of the top practitioners of the business of mergers and acquisitions, playing a role in a number of major transactions. Perhaps his highest-profile assignment was advising what was then Philip Morris in its unsolicited takeover bid of Kraft, which led to a $13.1 billion deal in 1988. Fleischer also provided legal counsel to BellSouth in its $86 billion sale to AT&T in 2007; to Chevron in its $36 billion takeover of Texaco in 2001; to Bestfoods in its $24 billion sale to Unilever in 2000; and to Dow Jones & Company in its $5.3 billion sale to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation. Fleischer was born on Jan. 27, 1933, in Hartford, Conn., the second son of Arthur and Clare (Katzenstein) Fleischer. He grew up in Hartford and Salt Lake City, in a family of scientists. He graduatedi from Yale University n 1953, and then joined the Army for two years, serving as a typist and working at the Pentagon. He went on to attend Yale Law School and graduated in 1958. When his former law school professor William L. Cary became chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission during the Kennedy administration, Mr. Fleischer left to serve as Mr. Cary’s executive assistant in Washington. Fleischer was also one of the most avid art collectors in the world of corporate law. He also served on the boards of the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Kitchen, a nonprofit experimental art institution, and donated works to the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum and Yale. In addition to his wife Susan, Fleischer is survived by two daughters, Elizabeth and Katie Fleischer; two grandsons; and his brother Everly.