White & Case has lured a partner with expertise in domestic and cross-border M&A to its office in Silicon Valley. William Choe joins White & Case from Morrison & Foerster, which he joined in January 2010 after working at Sonnenschein Nath & Rosenthal, one of the predecessor firms of what is now Dentons.
Choe comes to White & Case with a broad roster of technology sector clients. He has represented VMWare in its acquisition of Desktone, Dimension Data in its acquisitions of OpSource and Xigo, and, on the sell side, Mobile Money Ventures in its purchase by Intuit and Mykonos Software its acquisition by Jupiter Networks, among many other clients. Choe joins a firm with a strong presence in the technology and telecommunications sectors, whose recent deals include advising Time Warner Cable on its proposed $78.7 billion sale to Charter Communications.
“Technology remains in high growth mode because much of the growth in this sector is done inorganically, to accelerate and meet the strategic imperatives of companies, within the ultracompetitive industry in which it resides,” Choe told IFLR1000.
“I think that what’s important when doing deal work, whether it’s on the buy side, for larger clients, or on the sell side, for venture-backed startup clients, and/or the financings for those sort of clients, is that you have to be able to do the full spectrum of deal work. It’s important to gain that perspective, having represented both growth companies as well as those that are fully grown on the buy-side,” he added.
Choe anticipates working on a high volume of cross-border as well as domestic M&A in coming months.
“The Silicon Valley impetus will extend itself beyond domestic or regional acquisitions. If you’re buy-side, you’re looking beyond borders for purposes of being strategic within a particular region, or otherwise going beyond domestic,” Choe said.
Choe holds a JD from University of Notre Dame Law School, an MBA from Columbia Business School, and a BA from the University of Michigan.