Sarah P. Payne

Payne was a principal advisor to a "Who's Who" of Wall Street financial institutions in the past year including Credit Suisse Group, Deutsche Bank Group, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JPMorgan Chase & Co., Morgan Stanley and Citigroup Inc. Her biggest move was underwriting Alibaba Group's $25 billion initial public offering.

It was the largest ever U.S. IPO, the largest ever tech IPO and the largest ever IPO globally, Sullivan & Cromwell reported. "Obviously, a very exciting deal, so high profile, getting so much attention," she said. "When you have a company that has operations largely in the [People's Republic of China], organized in the Cayman Islands and undertaking a U.S. listing, it certainly increases the level of complication in a transaction."

Additionally, Payne represented AT&T Inc. in the sale of its Connecticut local exchange operation for $2 billion to Frontier Communications. And she supervises ongoing representation of Teva Pharmaceutical Industries Ltd. in its acquisition of Allergan Generics, a $40.5 billion deal.

"I'm a securities and a M&A lawyer," Payne said. "I enjoy both equally, especially the part about getting to know the nuts and bolts of the industries I'm working in. Not just the legal questions from clients, but digging in and really finding out how they work."

The Alibaba deal stood out. Payne traveled to Hong Kong for early drafting sessions and worked on the final details from Palo Alto with colleagues in New York and China. "We all worked very hard to make sure the transaction was done on the desired time schedule," she said. "It did go smoothly, and we got a great result."

? John Roemer