Skadden lawyers who guided Musk's $44 bln Twitter deal join Sullivan & Cromwell

U.S. law firm Sullivan & Cromwell on Wednesday said it hired two dealmakers from Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom whose experience includes representing Elon Musk in his contentious, on-again-off-again $44 billion acquisition of social media platform Twitter.

Mike Ringler and Peter Jones have joined Sullivan & Cromwell's Palo Alto office as partners, the firm said. The pair worked on a string of multi-billion dollar tech-oriented deals while at Skadden.

Although Sullivan & Cromwell has a "storied M&A franchise," the firm did not have a strong tech-focused dealmaking team in their Palo Alto office, Ringler said.

Joseph Yaffe, the leader of Skadden's Palo Alto office, thanked Ringler and Jones in a statement and said the firm's M&A practice is "well positioned to handle what we expect will be a robust year for M&A activity in the tech sector."

Musk said in a July 2022 filing penned by Ringler that he was terminating his planned deal to buy Twitter, claiming the social media company had breached multiple provisions of the merger agreement.

Following a lawsuit from Twitter, Musk finally completed his acquisition of the company, since renamed X, in October 2022.

New York-founded Skadden and Sullivan & Cromwell are among the top U.S. law firms for M&A advice. Skadden was a principal advisor on 205 deals worth $221 billion in announced global deals in 2023, the fifth largest for any firm, according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group. Sullivan & Cromwell was ranked ninth, serving as principal advisor on 113 announced global deals worth $157 billion.

Apart from representing Musk, Ringler and Jones represented cybersecurity firm Splunk as it was bought by Cisco Systems for $28 billion last year. The deal is Cisco's largest-ever, and the company won unconditional antitrust approval from EU regulators in March.

The pair also represented engineering software vendor Ansys in its acquisition by chip designer Synopsys for $35 billion. Reuters reported in January the deal would be the biggest acquisition in the technology sector since chipmaker Broadcom took over software maker VMware last November in a $69 billion deal.

Ringler and Jones declined to name specific clients but said that they have been "incredibly enthusaistic about their move."

Leading U.S. and international law firms are advising on fewer deals, LSEG figures show, but the combined value of the transactions is larger as worldwide mergers and acquisitions activity increased during the first quarter of 2024.