Mountain View (September 13, 2013) – Fenwick & West is pleased to announce that firm partners Doug Cogen and Gordon Davidson have been named among the Daily Journal’s “Top 100 Lawyers in California.” The list recognizes California-based attorneys involved in cases that had a broad legal or industry impact over the past 18 months.
Since client Facebook’s $16 billion initial public offering last May, Fenwick chairman Davidson has helped take six more companies public. While Facebook’s IPO “dominated the headlines” last year, Davidson points out in an accompanying Daily Journal profile that two more Fenwick clients, “strong companies with venture capital backing,” ServiceNow and Workday, followed that IPO with “strong public offerings.”
"The stock market in general has steadily climbed since [2009] and markets are more receptive to technology IPOs," he told the Daily Journal. "Many of the companies are more mature, and there has been a pent-up demand by investors."
He also said that international activity is growing. Davidson was part of the Fenwick team that represented Shanghai, China-based Spreadtrum Communications Inc. in its $1.78 billion acquisition by Tsinghua Unigroup Ltd.
"It's one of the largest technology company acquisitions in China," Davidson said. "This tells us that there are other centers of innovation. We are seeing an upward trend of international deals, both inbound and outbound, and I think this is a long-term trend."
He also points to client Uber as an example of a U.S.-based company expanding into international markets.
Cogen, co-chair of Fenwick’s mergers and acquisitions group, has worked on more than 100 acquisitions on behalf of networking giant Cisco Systems, Inc. over the past 10 years and the profile accompanying his recognition notes that he “intimately understands the networking equipment company's business goals.”
"You bring that sort of identification with your client and deep feeling of wanting to see them succeed, because the effort that's required in those sort of deals is extremely intense," he told the Daily Journal.
Over the past year, Cogen worked on more than 10 acquisitions for Cisco valued at more than $5.6 billion, including Cisco’s $2.7 billion acquisition of SourceFire Inc. Nearly half of those acquisitions were cross-border, including acquisitions in Israel, Austria, Czech Republic, Ireland and England.
About Fenwick & West
Fenwick & West provides comprehensive legal services to ground-breaking technology and life sciences companies at every stage of their lifecycle. We craft innovative, cost-effective and practical solutions for established and emerging companies on issues ranging from venture capital, public offerings, joint ventures, M&A and strategic relationships, to intellectual property, litigation and dispute resolution, taxation, antitrust, and employment and labor law. For more than four decades, Fenwick has helped some of the world's most recognized companies become and remain market leaders.