JENNIFER FONNER FITCHEN is the global co-leader of the firm’s mergers and acquisitions practice. She is also the former chair of the ABA’s Acquisitions of Public Companies Subcommittee. Jen counsels public and private companies on both friendly and hostile acquisition transactions, divestitures and spin-outs, mergers-of-equals, going-private transactions, deals involving earnouts and contingent value rights, and complex structures such as inversion, double-dummy and reverse morris trust transactions. Her experience includes transactions that are truly one-of-a-kind. Jen’s experience includes hundreds of transactions involving in excess of $230 billion in value and over 25 years practicing in Northern California.
Recognized as “one of Silicon Valley’s leading M&A lawyers handling complex technology and life sciences transactions,” Jen lectures around the country on M&A-related matters, including at events hosted by Stanford University, the American Bar Association, the Association of Corporate Counsel, Practicing Law Institute and other professional organizations.
“She has great M&A market knowledge and the ability to put complex topics into simple terms and state uncomfortable truths in non-threatening language to senior executives.” Chambers USA 2021
Jen has been ranked in Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business in the category of Corporate/M&A every year since 2010. In 2012, she was honored by Chambers USA with a “Women in Law” award in the category of Up & Coming Corporate/M&A Lawyer of the Year. LMG Life Sciences has recognized her as a “Life Sciences Star” every year since 2015 as well as shortlisted as “Best in Mergers and Acquisitions” at the Americas Women In Business Law Awards in 2020. Jen was recognized in the 2018 edition of Who’s Who Legal: M&A and Governance. She has been named to The Recorder’s list of “Women Leaders in Technology Law” multiple times and was also recognized by The Daily Journal as one of the Top 100 leading lawyers in California. Jen has been recognized multiple times by Super Lawyers and The Legal 500 as a leading M&A practitioner in Northern California. In 2015, a Q&A with Jen was featured in the Huffington Post Business section. In 2019, BTI Consulting, on the basis of a nomination by a corporate counsel at a Fortune 500 company, named Jen as a member of the BTI Client Service All-Star Team for law firms.
Notable transactions include:
- Representing Centerview Partners LLP as financial adviser to the Independent Transaction Committee of the Board of Directors of Sprint Corporation in connection with the combination of Sprint and T-Mobile US, Inc., in a stock-for-stock merger with a total implied enterprise value of approximately $59 billion for Sprint and approximately $146 billion for the combined company
- Sale of Siebel Systems, Inc. to Oracle Corporation in a cash, stock election “double-dummy” merger valued at approximately $5.8 billion
- Combination of Angie’s List with IAC’s HomeAdvisor business, creating a new publicly traded company, ANGI Homeservices Inc., with a combined value of approximately $5 billion
- Sale of Pandora Media to Sirius XM in a stock-for-stock merger valued at approximately $3.5 billion
- Sale of Dionex Corporation to Thermo Fisher Scientific in a two-step cash tender offer valued at approximately $2.1 billion
- Acquisition by Roche of Ignyta, Inc. in a two-step cash tender offer valued at approximately $1.7 billion
- Splunk’s acquisition of SignalFx for $1.05 billion in cash
- Sale of Move Inc. (Realtor.com) to News Corp. in a two-step cash tender offer valued at approximately $1 billion
- Sale of OPNET Technologies to Riverbed Technology in a cash and stock two-step exchange offer valued at approximately $1 billion
- Sale of Shape Security, Inc. to F5 Networks for approximately $1 billion in cash
- PayPal, Inc.’s acquisition of Xoom Corporation in a cash merger valued at approximately $890 million
- Omnicell’s acquisition of Aesynt for approximately $275 million
- Omnicell’s acquisition of the 340B Link business of Pharmaceutical Strategies Group (PSG) for approximately $225 million
- Omnicell’s acquisition of Medpak Holdings in a transaction valued at approximately $156 million
- Omnicell’s acquisition of Ateb for approximately $41 million
- Omnicell’s acquisition of Rioux Vision, Inc. for approximately $26 million
- Omnicell’s acquisition of the Sure-Med product line from Baxter Healthcare for approximately $15 million
- Omnicell’s acquisition of InPharmics (terms not disclosed)
- Palo Alto Networks, Inc. acquisition of Israel-based Twistlock for $410 million in cash
- Palo Alto Networks, Inc.’s acquisition of Israel-based PureSec, a leader in serverless security
- West Marine’s sale to Monomoy Capital Partners in a cash merger valued at approximately $340 million
Jen earned her J.D., cum laude, from the Georgetown University Law Center and graduated with a B.A. in Business-Economics from the University of California, Los Angeles, magna cum laude, with college honors distinction and was elected to membership in Phi Beta Kappa.