Mike Ringler

Mr. Ringler also regularly advises boards and special committees when confronting challenges to corporate control, including unsolicited acquisition proposals, hostile takeovers, proxy contests and shareholder activism.

He has been ranked by Chambers USA since 2008, listed in Best Lawyers in America since 2010 and recognized on many occasions as a leader in his field by national and statewide publications, including The American Lawyer, The New York Times and California’s Daily Journal.

Mr. Ringler’s representative transactions prior to joining Skadden include:

• Hewlett-Packard in its:
  • $25 billion acquisition of Compaq and related proxy contest with Walter Hewlett; and
  • $5 billion acquisition of Mercury Interactive;
• Freescale in its $19 billion sale to a private equity consortium led by The Blackstone Group;
• CA Technologies in its $19 billion sale to Broadcom;
• Seagate in its:
  • $18 billion three-party sale to Silver Lake Partners and Veritas; and
  • $2 billion acquisition of Maxtor;
• Pixar in its $8 billion sale to The Walt Disney Company;
• Sun Microsystems in its:
  • $7.8 billion sale to Oracle; and
  • $2 billion acquisition of Cobalt Networks;
• McAfee in its $7.7 billion sale to Intel;
• MuleSoft in its $7 billion sale to Salesforce.com;
• Business Objects in its $7 billion sale to SAP;
• Informatica in its $5.3 billion sale to Permira Advisers and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board;
• LSI in its $5.2 billion merger with Agere Systems;
• Cypress Semiconductor in its $5 billion merger of equals with Spansion;
• FEI in its $4.8 billion sale to Thermo Fisher Scientific;
• Riverbed Technology in its $4 billion sale to Thoma Bravo;
• AppDynamics in its $3.8 billion sale to Cisco;
• Solectron in its $3.6 billion sale to Flextronics;
• Trulia in its $3.5 billion sale to Zillow;
• 3Com in its $3.3 billion sale to Hewlett-Packard;
• Aruba Networks in its $3 billion sale to Hewlett-Packard;
• Salesforce.com in a number of transactions, including its $2.5 billion acquisition of ExactTarget;
• 3PAR in its:
  • $2.4 billion sale to Hewlett-Packard following Hewlett-Packard’s unsolicited acquisition proposal for 3PAR during the pendency of 3PAR’s proposed $1.7 billion sale to Dell; and
  • proposed $1.7 billion sale to Dell (terminated following 3PAR’s receipt of an unsolicited acquisition proposal from Hewlett-Packard);
• The GoDaddy Group in its:
  • $2.25 billion sale to Kohlberg Kravis & Roberts, Silver Lake Partners and Technology Crossover Ventures; and
  • $1.8 billion acquisition of Host Europe Group;
• Taleo in its $2.2 billion sale to Oracle;
• Redback Networks in its $2.2 billion sale to Ericsson;
• Flatiron Health in its $2 billion sale to Roche;
• Apptio in its $2 billion sale to Vista Equity Partners;
• Marketo in its $1.8 billion sale to Vista Equity Partners;
• YouTube in its $1.7 billion sale to Google; and
• CVent in its $1.65 billion sale to Vista Equity Partners.

Selected Awards and Recognition

• Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business 2008-2019, where he is described as an “exceptional M&A lawyer” who is held in “high esteem by clients and peers alike”
• Chambers Global: The World’s Leading Lawyers for Business 2019
• Daily Journal’s 2019, 2018, 2015 and 2012 lists of the Top 100 Lawyers in California
• Daily Journal, M&A Top Innovator, 2015
• The Legal 500 2019, which called him “an accomplished M&A lawyer with an excellent record in multi-billion dollar transactions”
• The Best Lawyers in America, listed annually since 2010, including being honored as a 2017 M&A Lawyer of the Year
• The American Lawyer, Dealmaker of the Year, 2015
• The Recorder, Attorney of the Year, 2010
• The New York Times’ “next generation of deal-makers,” 2007
• Daily Journal, Top 20 Under 40, 2007