Tad Freese represents technology companies, investment banks, and other public and private companies in their corporate transactions. He currently serves as the Managing Partner of the Silicon Valley and San Francisco offices, and previously served as Vice Chair of Latham & Watkins' Global Corporate Department.
Mr. Freese helps clients navigate both significant transactions and key strategic legal issues to enable them to grow and succeed. Specifically, he advises on:
- Initial public offerings (IPOs)
- Mergers and acquisitions
- Other public and private debt and equity securities offerings
- Corporate governance issues
- Public company disclosure issues
- Federal and state securities law compliance
Mr. Freese draws on more than 25 years of experience at Latham, advising technology companies in Silicon Valley through all market conditions. He has also advised all of the major investment banks on IPOs (for example: Angie’s List, Arista Networks, SurveyMonkey, Twilio, and Wageworks) as well as other significant transactions.
Mr. Freese has advised clients on hundreds of transactions. Representative significant transactions include:
- Advanced Micro Devices in its:
- US$35 billion acquisition of Xilinx
- Acquisitions of ATI Technologies and SeaMicro
- More than US$5 billion of equity and debt financings
- Sales of AMD’s communication products, handheld, and digital television divisions
- Joint venture with ATIC to form GLOBALFOUNDRIES
- Joint venture with Fujitsu Limited to create Spansion
- Airbnb in its:
- US$3.8 billion IPO
- US$2 billion convertible senior note offering
- Cloudera in its pending sale to affiliates of Clayton, Dubilier & Rice and KKR
- Corsair Gaming in its US$238 million IPO
- Duolingo in its US$521 million IPO
- e.l.f. Beauty in its US$142 million IPO
- Extreme Networks in acquisitions of Zebra’s wireless LAN business and Avaya’s networking business
- Five9 in its US$14.7 billion acquisition by Zoom
- Hippo Enterprises in its US$5 billion business combination with Reinvent Technology Partners Z
- Hortonworks in a US$5.2 billion combination with Cloudera
- Lucasfilm in:
- US$4.05 billion sale to The Walt Disney Company
- Divestiture of THX
- Okta in its US$6.5 billion acquisition of Auth0
- Slack in its US$27.7 billion acquisition by Salesforce
- Spansion in:
- US$567 million IPO
- High yield, convertible note, and follow-on offerings
- Acquisition of Fujitsu’s microcontroller business
- US$1.7 billion sale to Cypress
- Virgin America in a US$306 million IPO and US$4.4 billion sale to Alaska Airlines
- WalkMe in its US$330 million IPO
Mr. Freese’s representative clients include:
- 8x8
- Advanced Micro Devices
- Airbnb
- Alkami Technology
- Blend Labs
- CH2M Hill
- Cloudera
- Corsair Gaming
- Cree
- Duolingo
- e.l.f. Beauty
- Extreme Networks
- Five9
- Hippo Insurance
- Impax Laboratories
- Lucasfilm
- Mentor Graphics
- Pivotal Software
- Postmates
- Slack
- Quantum Corp.
- Virgin America
- WalkMe
- Xcerra Corporation