Latham & Watkins LLP

Latham & Watkins LLP is highly active in deal-related litigation, partly due to its thriving transactional M&A practice. A key feature of the firm is how involved litigators are in the early stages of a corporate transaction, helping to structure deals to avoid potential problems further down the line. As well as acting for acquirers, targets, and financial advisors on issues ranging from deal protection measures, conflicts of interest, and change-of-control payments to disclosure obligations, the firm is also a leader at the litigation stage, handling, stockholder class actions, derivative cases, material adverse change matters, poison pill cases, proxy contests, and appraisal actions. Peers praise the lead partners in the securities litigation and professional liability practice, Michele Johnson in Orange County, Blair Connelly in New York and Colleen Smith in San Diego. Connelly led the defense of Oracle executives in one of the largest acquisitions to face a stockholder challenge through trial in the Delaware Court of Chancery, when plaintiffs filed claims against its $9.4bn acquisition of NetSuite, Inc. in 2016. In 2023, the court granted judgment in favor of two key executives in a stockholder derivative suit. Smith handled a consolidated class action for REIT Excel Trust, Inc., when stockholders challenged its cash-out merger into The Blackstone Group.