Rachel J. Barnett

Rachel Barnett is a corporate and securities litigation attorney in the New York office of Skadden, Arps. She concentrates on representing corporations and their officers and directors in merger and acquisition-related litigation, shareholder derivative lawsuits and securities class actions. She and her colleagues have earned a number of victories that have influenced the development of Delaware corporation law. Her representations include: 

• Activision in a shareholder class action lawsuit arising from its $18.9 billion transaction with Vivendi, S.A.; 
• Bank of America in shareholder derivative litigation arising from losses experienced by Merrill Lynch as a result of its investments in collateralized debt obligations and similar mortgage-backed securities; 
• Yahoo! Inc. in litigation brought by Yahoo! stockholders relating to Microsoft’s nearly $44 billion unsolicited offer to acquire Yahoo!; 
• Chicago Mercantile Exchange Holdings, Inc. in litigation arising from its more than $8 billion acquisition of CBOT Holdings, Inc. (the parent corporation of the Chicago Board of Trade), as well as litigation arising from CME’s nearly $10 billion acquisition of the New York Mercantile Exchange; 
• Lyondell Chemical Company in shareholder litigation arising from the sale of Lyondell in a $13 billion cash merger to Basell AF; 
• Cementos Portland Valderrivas S.A. in litigation brought by shareholders of a Spanish corporation challenging an asset purchase under Spanish law; and 
• News Corp. in securities and derivative litigation brought by shareholders relating to the publicized matters at News of the World. 

Her experience as a litigator also extends to matters related to unclaimed property (or escheat). She was involved in a litigation brought by Computer Associates against the State of Delaware, in which she helped the state secure a $17.65 million victory. Since then, she has worked with companies in, among other matters, understanding unclaimed property laws, mitigating unclaimed property liability exposure in mergers and acquisitions, and representing companies in multistate audits.

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