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Jeffrey R. Vetter

By Kylie Reynolds | Sep. 12, 2013

Sep. 12, 2013

Jeffrey R. Vetter

See more on Jeffrey R. Vetter

Fenwick & West LLP | Mountain View | Practice type: Corporate


In the months leading up to the largest technology IPO in U.S. history, Vetter said his moves were being followed by newspapers, bloggers and anyone else willing to comment on social networking site Facebook going public.


The intense public attention was a new dynamic for the veteran securities attorney, who is a partner and co-chair of the securities and corporate finance practice at Fenwick. He co-led the transaction with Fenwick chairman Gordon K. Davidson.


"Every time you filed an amendment with the SEC, people would be picking apart the filing and reading into what had changed," he said. "You had a lot of armchair quarterbacks following that one."


Facebook Inc. went public in May 2012 for $16 billion. But Vetter's IPO work didn't stop there. Apart from Facebook, his public offerings amounted to a combined value of about $1.25 billion in a little more than a year. He played a leading role in management software vendor Workday Inc.'s $732.5 million IPO in October 2012, which was heralded as one of the most anticipated technology public offerings of the year. And recently, he co-led the team that represented underwriters in the $292.33 million public offering of Tableau Software Inc., a data visualization software company.


While Vetter works with technology companies, he isn't quite as tech savvy as his clients, he said. It's the constant exposure to new products and technology that keeps his job fresh.


"You don't get in a rut, doing the same thing over and over," he said. "I'm literally learning something new with every project."

- Kylie Reynolds

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