Jane Ross

Most recently, Ross represented Telstra, Australia's leading telecommunications and information services company, with its acquisition of Silicon Valley-based Ooyala, which focuses on video streaming and analytics.

It's the latest deal that Ross has worked on involving companies based abroad.

Among recent deals are drugmaker Merz Inc.'s $600 million acquisition of Ulthera Inc.; and Opera Software ASA, an Oslo, Norway-based technology company, in its $75 million cash acquisition of AdColony, a Los Angeles-based mobile video advertising network.

The Opera deal included up to an additional $275 million in earnout payments.

"The interesting part of these transactions is educating the clients on how the deals are done in the United States," Ross said, "including deal structures that are different from what they are used to seeing."

She added, "Foreign buyers tend to use cash as deal currency, if they have it, since receiving stock in the foreign company is not as attractive to U.S. investors."

For many of the cross-border deals that she does, "There aren't any financing requirements associated with it," Ross said. "So, we haven't had to deal with the economics in the home countries."

On the homefront, "Merger and acquisition activity definitely seems to be on the upswing," Ross said. "Based on the deal flow that is happening in Silicon Valley, it's going to be a good year for M&A."

Among her other matters, Ross is representing Facebook Inc. in its $16 billion acquisition of WhatsApp, a cross-platform mobile messaging company - Facebook's largest acquisition to date.

She also is representing RF Micro Devices in its approximately $1.6 billion merger with radio frequency chipmaker TriQuint Semiconductor.

Last year, Ross represented Jazz Pharmaceuticals in its acquisition of Italian biotech company Gentium for approximately $1 billion.

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