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Silicon Valley
990 Marsh Road
Menlo Park, CA 94025

Practices
Industries

Louis Lehot

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Partner  

Mr. Lehot is a partner in the Corporate practice group in the firm's Silicon Valley office.

Areas of Practice

Mr. Lehot's practice focuses on advising public and private companies and their financial sponsors and investment banks in capital raising transactions, public offerings and private placements of equity, equity-linked and debt securities, M&A transactions, as well as corporate governance, disclosure, financial reporting, proxy, stock exchange and securities law compliance matters.  Mr. Lehot has represented both public and private clients in the United States and globally, with a focus on cross-border transactions. Mr. Lehot regularly represents U.S. and non-U.S. registrants before the SEC, FINRA, NYSE and NASDAQ.  Most recently, Mr. Lehot represented RealD in its $230 million initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange and RadNet in its $545 million debt refinancing and high yield note issuance.

Prior to joining Sheppard Mullin, Mr. Lehot practiced with Simpson Thacher & Bartlett in its Silicon Valley office and with Shearman & Sterling in its New York, London and Paris offices. Mr. Lehot speaks fluent French.

Education

  • J.D., Boston College Law School, 2000, Cum Laude
  • B.S.F.S., Georgetown University, 1994, Cum Laude
  • C.E.P., Institut d'Etudes Politiques de Strasbourg (France), 1993

Admissions

  • California
  • New York

Mr. Lehot's recent M&A experience includes advising SiRF Technology in its public stock-for-stock merger with CSR plc, and recent capital markets deal credits include advising RealD in its $230 million initial public offering on the New York Stock Exchange in 2010, RadNet in its $545 million 2010 debt refinancing and high yield issuance, OpenTable and certain selling stockholders in its $200 million all secondary offering in 2009, the underwriters in Oracle Corporation's $4.5 billion offering of debt securities to finance the purchase of Sun Microsystems, in Micron Technology's concurrent public common stock and convertible note offerings and in GLG Partners' convertible note offering.  His clients have included technology names such as AOL, Agilent, Seagate, SiRF and STMicroelectronics, investment banks including Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citi, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, UBS and Wachovia, as well as leading Bay Area-based financial sponsors. In addition, Mr. Lehot has acted for the Capital Markets Committee of the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association ("SIFMA") and regularly advises SIFMA members on the Master Agreement Among Underwriters and the Master Selected Dealers Agreement.

M&A representations:

  • SiRF Technology Holdings, a NASDAQ-listed public company, in connection with its agreement and plan of merger with CSR plc, a London Stock Exchange listed foreign private issuer, in a stock-for-stock combination (2009)
  • Credit Suisse as financial advisor to SPAC vehicle Heckmann Corporation in its acquisition of China Water & Drinks (2008)
  • Hellman & Friedman LLC in connection with the leveraged buyout and debt financing of Goodman Global, Inc., and its tender offers for outstanding fixed and floating rate notes (2007-2008) and Goodman Global in its exchange offer for new 13.50%/14/00% senior subordinated notes (2008)
  • AOL LLC, in the acquisition of Sphere Source, Inc. (2008)
  • AOL LLC, in the acquisition of Goowy Media Inc. (2008)
  • Silver Lake Partners and TPG in connection with the sale of Network General Corporation to NetScout Systems, Inc. in a combined cash, stock and debt transaction (2007)
  • VF Holding Corp. and its wholly owned subsidiary, Vertafore, Inc., portfolio companies of Hellman & Friedman LLC, in the purchase of all of the outstanding shares of common stock of Advanced Solutions, Inc. (2007)
  • Seagate Technology in connection with $1.8 billion acquisition of Maxtor Corporation (2006)
  • Elevation Partners in connection with its strategic investment in Forbes Media LLC (2006)
  • International Petroleum Investment Company (Abu Dhabi) in its investment in Borealis A/S (2005)
  • Novartis, in the demerger of its agribusiness and crop science units and combination with the agrochemicals business of AstraZeneca to form Syngenta (2000)

Capital Markets representations:

  • Common equity offerings for RealD (2010), OpenTable (2009),  Micron* (2009), CB Richard Ellis (2008), Heckmann Corporation*, (2007), AMIS Holdings* (2007), ChipMOS* (2006); Business Objects* (2005); ExonHit Therapeutics (2005); ALSTOM (2004), SES Global* (2004); France Telecom (2004); Orange (2001), STMicroelectronics N.V. (2001), Novartis AG and Syngenta AG (2000) (* represented underwriters) 
  • Convertible note offerings for GLG Partners, Inc.* (2009) and Micron Technology* (2009 and 2007), an exchangeable note offering for POSCO* (2008), convertible note offerings for Lawson Software (2007), China Medical Technologies (2006) and San Disk Corporation* (2006), and STMicroelectronics (2003) and exchangeable note offerings for France Telecom in respect of shares of Orange and STMicroelectronics (2002 and 2001)
  • Multi-billion dollar investment grade bond issuances for Oracle Corporation* and Seagate Technology
  • High yield debt issuances for RadNet (2010), Rhodia (2005 and 2004)

Representative SEC representations:

  • SiRF Technology Holdings
  • CB Richard Ellis
  • Goodman Global
  • RealD
  • Seagate Technology
  • Agilent Technologies
  • STMicroelectronics
  • Novartis
  • Syngenta
  • Volvo
  • ALSTOM
  • Rhodia
  • Technip

Honors

  • Legal 500, 2010

Memberships

  • Member, American Bar Association, Business Law Section, Subcommittee on Negotiated Acquisitions
  • The French-American Chamber of Commerce of San Francisco

Events

 
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