Ashby Burks is of counsel in the Nashville office. He is a member of the Firm's Health Law and Business practice groups. Mr. Burks engages in a broad corporate practice, emphasizing mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures and other business transactions. He has served as counsel in the purchase, sale or joint venture of more than 100 hospitals and other investor-owned and not-for-profit health care businesses.
Recently, Mr. Burks represented the selling stockholders in the sale of an industry-leading provider of software communication applications to the healthcare industry and other commercial markets. He has also recently represented clients in the purchase of, or creation of joint ventures to operate, four different healthcare facilities. Among other recently closed transactions on which Mr. Burks served as lead counsel is the sale of a not-for-profit acute care hospital to an investor-owned system.
Mr. Burks also represents lenders and borrowers in financing transactions. He recently served as lead counsel to a large financial institution making a secured term loan and working capital facility to an operator of psychiatric residential treatment facilities.
Mr. Burks was previously Vice President, Secretary and General Counsel of Quorum Health Group, Inc. He was a member of the five-person executive management team which developed strategy and set policy for the company. His responsibilities included retaining and overseeing the work of outside counsel, advising the Board of Directors and senior management on legal and business matters affecting the company, and managing the company’s legal department. While at Quorum, he led the legal team which successfully settled major False Claims Act litigation against the company while simultaneously overseeing negotiation and completion of the company’s acquisition by Triad Hospitals, Inc.
Mr. Burks also served in the legal department of Hospital Corporation of America for eleven years, concluding his tenure as Vice President and Assistant General Counsel. His responsibilities there included serving as lead counsel in structuring and negotiating merger, acquisition, sale and joint venture transactions in a variety of health care businesses. Mr. Burks was also responsible for overseeing the work of the seven lawyers on the mergers and acquisitions team.
Mr. Burks has also represented his clients in a variety of other matters, including: secured and unsecured credit facilities, debt and equity tender offers, public and non-public offerings of debt and equity securities, venture capital transactions, real estate purchases, sales and leases, internal investigations, executive employment and severance agreements.
- Listed since 2008 in Chambers USA: America's Leading Business Lawyers as a leading health care lawyer in Tennessee
- Listed since 2007 in The Best Lawyers in America® in Corporate Law, Health Care Law and Mergers & Acquisitions Law
- Named "Best of the Bar," Nashville Business Journal (2011)
- Named an Outstanding Healthcare Transaction Lawyer by Nightingale's Healthcare News (2007)
- Member – Phi Beta Kappa
- Recipient – Samuel I. Rosenman Prize, Columbia Law School
- Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar – Columbia Law School
- Member – Board of Directors, Minnie Pearl Cancer Foundation
- Co-founder and Former Board Member – Ten Thousand Villages of Nashville, Inc.
- Former Member – Board of Directors, Martha O'Bryan Center
- Member – Nominations Support Unit, Presbytery of Middle Tennessee
- Member – Session of Westminster Presbyterian Church
- Member – Board of Trustees, Oak Hill School, 1997 – 2001
- Tennessee, 1985
- Virginia, 1982
- Columbia University School of Law, J.D., 1982
- University of Virginia, B.A., 1979, with high distinction