Richard E. Climan is a leading M&A lawyer who has handled some of the most prominent and industry-changing acquisitions in the technology and life sciences sectors over the past three decades. He has been described as “one of the best legal minds in M&A” and a “gold-standard transactional lawyer.”

Recognized as of one of the 10 most highly regarded M&A lawyers and one of the 10 most highly regarded corporate governance lawyers in North America by Who’s Who Legal, Rick excels at negotiating and advising multinational clients on all types of acquisition transactions and related matters. In Chambers USA, he has a Band 1 ranking, being described by clients as “the dean of M&A.”

In the past year, Rick acted as lead transactional counsel to Walmart in its US$16 billion acquisition of a 77% stake in Flipkart, lead transactional counsel to Marvell Technology Group in its US$6 billion acquisition of Cavium, and lead transactional counsel to Synopsys in its acquisition of Black Duck Software.

As a member of the adjunct faculty at UCLA School of Law and a lecturer at UC Berkeley School of Law, Rick has co-taught, with Chief Justice Leo Strine of the Delaware Supreme Court, a course titled “Real World M&A.”

For more than 25 years, Rick has been an active member of the American Bar Association Business Law Section’s M&A Committee, a group with more than 4,000 members internationally. He served as Chair from 2002 to 2006 and is currently a member of the Committee’s Executive Council. He also co-Chairs the ABA’s annual National M&A Institute, now in its 22nd year, and was former Chair of the Securities Regulation Institute, presented by Northwestern School of Law in Coronado. He is founding chair of the “Buyer Power Ratio” deal points study, which was launched in 2017.

Rick lectures around the world on M&A-related matters and has participated in M&A-related presentations at Harvard, Columbia, Stanford, UC Berkeley, and University of Virginia law schools.

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