As an associate in 1999, Solum with four partners founded Davis Polk's Menlo Park office. "I'd been in New York at Cravath," she said. "I worked on dot coms, and I could see that it made sense to move to the epicenter. To be a real player in Silicon Valley you had to be here."
Today Solum is a partner and a leading corporate lawyer whose practice encompasses capital markets, mergers and acquisitions and governance work. She has represented major companies and technology startups or their advisers on transformative transactions for more than 15 years, including the recent initial public offerings of GoDaddy Inc., Etsy Inc., Sunrun Inc. and Coupa Software Inc. Her deals represent an aggregate value of more than $100 billion.
Solum's client FormFactor Inc. of Livermore, which helps semiconductor manufacturers test the integrated circuits that power consumer mobile devices, sought her advice on its acquisition of Cascade Microtech Inc. and the related $150 million acquisition financing.
She advised Santa Clara-based Affymetrix Inc., a provider of life science and molecular diagnostic products, on its 2016 sale for $1.3 billion to Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. The deal was briefly sidetracked when Affymetrix received an unsolicited buyout bid from Origin Technologies Corp., backed by a Chinese investment firm.
"That was a bittersweet transaction for me," Solum said, "because Affymetrix had been a client for a decade. It was an interesting deal and it made a big media splash after it was announced at a big health care conference in San Francisco." Between the deal's announcement and the closing, another bid arrived from Chinese equity buyers, she said. "There was a significant amount of additional work to evaluate that bid, and it made for an intense week, no question."
The complication also sidetracked Solum's personal plans. "Plans I had to go to the Big Island had to be postponed during what was almost a 24-7 effort," she said. "The family went without me, but I made up for it later."
Solum serves as a board member on the Women in Law Empowerment Forum, a group focused on educating women on how to become leaders in the workplace and in the community. She is also a sustaining member of the Parca Auxiliary, supporting programs and services dedicated to enriching the lives of developmentally disabled clients and their families on the San Francisco Peninsula.
- John Roemer
For reprint rights or to order a copy of your photo:
Email
Jeremy_Ellis@dailyjournal.com
for prices.
Direct dial: 213-229-5424
Send a letter to the editor:
Email: letters@dailyjournal.com