Achievements

A Latham team led by partner Roman Martinez, Global Chair of the firm’s Supreme Court & Appellate Practice, secured a unanimous victory at the US Supreme Court for Ava Tharpe, a teenage student with severe epilepsy. Ava's family sued Osseo Area Schools for denying reasonable accommodations under the Americans with Disabilities Act and Rehabilitation Act. The school district won in the lower courts, and Latham was then hired to take the case to the Supreme Court. The Court agreed with Latham’s arguments and overturned the Eighth Circuit’s uniquely stringent standard disfavoring children with disabilities. The decision broadens legal protections for other children with disabilities, ensuring that all plaintiffs are treated equally under both statutes.

A cross-practice Latham team represented the financing sources in a US$4.66 billion refinancing for Alera, an independent financial services and insurance firm. The milestone transaction is the largest-ever syndicated refinancing of a loan originated in the private credit market, according to CreditSights.

A cross-practice Latham team represents an investment group led by Andrew Cavenagh and 49ers Enterprises in the acquisition of a majority stake in Rangers Football Club. Formed in 1872, Rangers is one of the best-known and most successful clubs in Europe. The consortium will chart a new strategic vision for the club’s future, prioritizing on-pitch performance and long-term financial sustainability.

A multidisciplinary Latham team represents Informatica, a leader in enterprise AI-powered cloud data management, in its acquisition by Salesforce, the world’s #1 AI CRM. The equity value of the deal is approximately US$8 billion and the transaction is expected to close early in Salesforce’s fiscal year 2027.

A Latham Supreme Court & Appellate team, led by Greg Garre, won a pivotal US Supreme Court case on behalf of Oklahoma State Attorney General Gentner Drummond when an equally divided Court upheld the Oklahoma Supreme Court's ruling that public charter schools must remain secular, thereby preventing the establishment of the nation's first religious charter school. In his 50th argument before the US Supreme Court, Greg successfully argued that the First Amendment does not require states to fund religious charter schools simply because they fund nonreligious ones. This decision was seen by many Supreme Court watchers as a major upset as well as a reinforcement of the Establishment Clause.

Latham represents Cox Enterprises in Cox Communications’ US$34.5 billion combination with Charter Communications – the largest M&A deal of 2025 at the time of its announcement. The cash and stock transaction will create an industry leader in mobile, broadband communications, and seamless video entertainment.

Latham’s Shareholder Activism & Takeover Defense team represented Harley-Davidson in connection with a “withhold” proxy contest launched by H Partners Management. The successful activism defense resulted in Harley-Davidson’s shareholders electing all of the Company’s director nominees at its 2025 Annual Meeting of Shareholders held on May 14, 2025.

London-led team represents DoorDash, Inc. in its proposed recommended take-private of food delivery platform Deliveroo plc. The acquisition is the latest in a series of high-profile take-privates on which the firm has advised in London, following its role in five of the top ten largest European public-to-private deals in 2024.

Latham’s cross-border investment funds team represented StepStone Real Estate on the formation of its fifth flagship fund dedicated to GP-led secondaries and recapitalizations of real estate vehicles. The fund has US$3.77 billion in primary commitments, making it the largest real estate secondaries fund raised to date. 

A multidisciplinary cross-border Latham team represents financial technology company FIS in two transformative concurrent deals, including the US$24.2 billion sale by FIS and GTCR of Worldpay to Global Payments, and FIS’ US$13.5 billion acquisition of Global Payments’ Issuer Solutions business.

A multidisciplinary Latham team represents Silver Lake, a global leader in technology investing, in its majority investment in Intel’s Altera business. The transaction values Altera at US$8.75 billion, making it the largest pure-play field programmable gate array (FPGA) semiconductor solutions company.

Latham successfully defended CoStar Group, Inc. in a trade secrets lawsuit brought by News Corp subsidiary, Move, Inc., securing a dismissal of all claims with prejudice nine months into the case after threatening the plaintiff with sanctions. The lawsuit accused CoStar, a leading provider of online real estate marketplaces, information, and analytics, and a former Move employee of misappropriating trade secrets. Latham's multi-pronged, aggressive legal strategy demonstrated the baselessness of Move's claims. Faced with potential sanctions, Move amended its complaint, which Latham successfully challenged, leading to the denial of a preliminary injunction and dismissal of two claims. Ultimately Move requested to dismiss the entire case with prejudice, vindicating CoStar without any concessions.

A cross-border Latham capital markets team advised the underwriters on the offering of US$2 billion in aggregate principal amount of zero coupon exchangeable bonds due 2032 by Baidu, a leading AI company in China, which bonds reference ordinary shares of Trip.com Group Limited that are listed on The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong Limited. The transaction represents the first exchangeable debt deal priced in 2025, and is the largest exchangeable bond offering since 2021.

A Latham Asia team advised the placing agents Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan, and China International Capital Corporation on the top-up placement of Xiaomi’s existing shares on The Stock Exchange of Hong Kong (SEHK). Xiaomi is a consumer electronics and smart manufacturing company headquartered in Beijing, China. The deal, valued in total at HK$42.6 billion (approximately US$5.47 billion), is the largest equity financing project in the global technology sector year to date, and largest in Hong Kong’s technology sector over the past three years.

A Latham corporate team represents Endeavor Group Holdings, Inc., a global sports and entertainment company, in the completion of its acquisition by Silver Lake, the global leader in technology investing, in partnership with the Endeavor management team and additional investors. The deal is the largest-ever take-private investment in the media and entertainment sector.

A Latham team represents the investment banks and private capital sources in Walgreens Boots Alliance’s US$23.7 billion acquisition by Sycamore Partners, a private equity firm specializing in retail, consumer, and distribution-related investments. The transaction is the largest LBO of 2025 to date and the third-largest healthcare LBO of all time in the US and Europe.

A Latham team advised Shield AI, the deep-tech company building autonomy software and defense aircraft, on its US$240 million F-1 strategic funding round, elevating its valuation to US$5.3 billion. One of the largest growth financing rounds in defense tech in 2025, the financing will support Shield AI in expanding its Hivemind Enterprise deployment to OEMs, governments, and companies, empowering the larger robotics and drone industrial base to build autonomy products.

Latham's asset management M&A and real estate teams advised Ares Management Corporation, a global alternative investment manager, on completing its acquisition of the international business of GLP Capital Partners Limited, excluding operations in Greater China, and certain affiliates. This acquisition expanded Ares’ global alternative investment platform to over US$525 billion AUM, including more than US$115 billion in its global Real Assets business.

In a historic case, Latham litigators and Lufthansa's in-house team persuaded the European Commission to close its interim measures investigation against Lufthansa without any action or remedy. The investigation concerned Lufthansa's A++ Joint Venture with United Airlines and Air Canada, with the Commission alleging potential irreversible harm to competition if Condor exited the Frankfurt-New York route due to Lufthansa ending Special Prorate Agreements (SPAs) with Condor. The Commission initially sought to mandate Lufthansa to maintain the SPAs on 2024 terms but ultimately agreed with Lufthansa that the criteria for interim measures were not met.

Latham represents Bridge Investment Group in its acquisition by Apollo, valued at US$1.5 billion. The all-stock asset management M&A transaction adds diversified specialized asset classes including residential and industrial real estate to Apollo’s offerings.

A Latham trial team defeated a long-running New York federal case that challenged U.S. Soccer’s authority to govern professional soccer in the US. North American Soccer League (NASL) claimed that U.S. Soccer conspired with co-defendant Major League Soccer to exclude NASL from Division I and Division II professional soccer and to monopolize these markets through the application of U.S. Soccer’s Professional League Standards. The jury took approximately 90 minutes to return its verdict, which rejected NASL’s proposed relevant market definition as a threshold issue.

A Latham fintech team advised Coinbase, a secure online platform for buying, selling, transferring, and storing cryptocurrency, on obtaining its Virtual Asset Service Provider (VASP) registration in the UK. This registration enables Coinbase to offer both crypto and fiat in its largest international market, making it the leading registered digital assets player in the UK.

A Latham arbitration team secured another significant victory for the Republic of Croatia in an investment treaty claim under the Croatia-Israel BIT, concerning a proposed luxury development near Dubrovnik's World Heritage Site. The case involved an attempt to re-litigate claims that had previously been adjudicated and dismissed in a prior ICSID arbitration, in which Latham successfully represented Croatia. This landmark decision reinforces the integrity of international arbitration and shields Croatia from defending duplicative claims.

A Latham trial, securities, and appellate team secured a complete appellate win after the Delaware Supreme Court unanimously affirmed the Court of Chancery’s post-trial judgment in favor of Latham clients Larry Ellison and Safra Catz in a stockholder derivative suit challenging Oracle Corporation’s US$9.4 billion acquisition of NetSuite Inc. in 2016. This decision marks a significant appellate victory involving one of the largest acquisitions to face a stockholder challenge through trial in Delaware.