The law firms Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, Davis Polk & Wardwell,
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Morrison Foerster, Slaughter and May and White & Case are involved in the planned £24.3 billion (about AUS$42.7 billion) acquisition of ARM Holdings Plc by Softbank Group Corp.
Davis Polk and Slaughter and May are advising ARM in the all-cash deal, the largest since the United Kingdom voted in June to leave the European Union. Freshfields and MoFo are advising Softbank in the Japanese company’s largest acquisition yet.
Softbank is one of Japan’s largest tech companies while ARM is the world’s leader in mobile applications processor architecture technologies.
Meanwhile, the law firm’s Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and White & case advised Softbank financial advisors Raine Group and Mizuho Securities, respectively, according to a report from
The Lawyer.
The Davis Polk corporate team includes managing partner Thomas J. Reid, partner Reuven B. Young and associate Adam H. Whitaker.
Partner John D. Paton and counsel Alon Gurfinkel are providing tax advice while partner Arthur J. Burke and counsel Mary K. Marks are providing antitrust and competition advice.
Davis Polk’s team – with members based in its London, New York and Washington DC offices – is completed by partner John B. Reynolds III who is providing regulatory advice.
Slaughter and May corporate partners Steve Cooke and Chris McGaffin and antitrust and regulatory part Jordan Ellison are advising ARM.
The Slaughter and May team also includes associates Alex Dustan, Christian Boney, Warwick Brennand, Chris Connolly, Elie Yoo, Jonathan Fenn and Rosemary Nelson.
Meanwhile, the Freshfields team advising Softbank is led by corporate partners Ben Spiers and Stephen Hewes.
The MoFo team advising Softbank is led by Tokyo managing partner Ken Siegeland London head of corporate and global M&A chair Graeme Sloan.
MoFo’s London team includes corporate partners Vlad Maly, Andrew Boyd and Gary Brown, tax partner Trevor James and finance partner Phil Slater. On the Tokyo side are partners Ivan Smallwood, Noah Carr, Leo Aguilar and James Robinson (all corporate) and finance partner Dale Caldwell.
MoFo is giving antitrust advice is through partners Jeff Jaeckel in Washington, D.C. and Rony Gerrits and Tom McQuail in Brussels. Regulatory advice is being given by partners Jessie Liu in Washington, D.C., Kevin Roberts in London and Andreas Gruenwald in Berlin.
The White & Case team was co-led by partners Jun Usami in Tokyo and Philip Broke in London.
The team included partners Jacqui Evans in London and Holt Goddard in New York, local partner Seiji Matsuzoe in Tokyo and associates Shino Asayama, Dan Harrington-Greenwood, Tina Kostelenos, Stephen Howard, Chantelle Forster and Jessica Chen.
Meanwhile,
The Lawyer reported that the Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton team was led by London partner Simon Jay.
Expected to close in the third quarter of the year, the all-cash Softbank acquisition of ARM is being financed by the Japanese tech firm’s existing cash and financing worth about £7.3 billion.
