After a hiatus since September, hostile activity has returned to Silicon
Valley with Broadcom Corp.'s $764 million bid for storage equipment maker
Emulex Corp. Seven of the 10 largest bids for tech companies last year
were unsolicited, but six of those bidders walked away, most notably
Microsoft Corp., which abandoned its $48 billion offer for Yahoo!
Inc. in May 2008. Oracle Corp. was the only pursuer to bag its prey
when it bought BEA Systems Inc.
Broadcom tapped Kenton King, Leif King and David Hansen
of Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom LLP in Palo Alto, Calif., for
legal advice. Company general counsel Arthur Chong was previously the
general counsel at Safeco Corp., which Kenton King -- no relation to Leif --
represented last year on its $6.2 billion sale to Liberty Mutual Group
while he was advising Yahoo! on Microsoft's approach. The offer by Irvine,
Calif.-based Broadcom is its first hostile bid and its first for a public
target; its 40-plus acquisitions have involved private, usually small,
technology companies.
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On the banking side, Stefan Selig, Todd Dow and David
King of Bank of America Merrill Lynch are advising Broadcom.
Emulex tapped Pawan Tewari of Goldman, Sachs & Co. and
Jonathan Layne, Dennis Friedman and Michelle Hodges of
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP. The Costa Mesa, Calif., target also has
a history with Skadden, whose Celeste Greene and Gregory Smith
represented it on its $316 million purchase of Vixel Corp. in 2003.
