Kenton J. King

Practice type: Corporate

Specialty: Mergers and acquisitions

Big Matters: The $1.1 billion acquisition of Verigy Ltd. by Advantest Corporation; Broadcom Corporation's acquisition of Provigent, Inc., a private company headquartered in Israel that provides mixed signal semiconductors for microwave backhaul systems.

King says that sometimes you have to break a deal to make one.

That was the case this year when he facilitated the $1.1 billion acquisition of Singapore-based Verigy Ltd. By the time Skadden's Japan-based client, Advantest Corp., expressed interest in the deal last year, Verigy, a company that designs, manufactures and sells test systems for the semiconductor industry, was already in a stock-for-stock merger deal with LTX-Credence, which also services the semiconductor industry.

Making the matter even trickier was the fact that Verigy couldn't terminate its deal with LTX-Credence until Verigy shareholders voted, at which point Singapore takeover laws permitted just 80 days for Advantest to close a deal with Verigy.

"You had to put up or shut up," King said.

That posed a conundrum for King because the deal would only happen if it won antitrust regulatory approval by the Singapore, United States and Japan governments.

That meant a process longer than 80 days, King said, so he and his team began the paperwork before Verigy backed away from its deal with LTX-Credence, allowing Advantest to act fast once the potential LTX-Credence merger died.

The acquisition happened shortly after a March earthquake and tsunami shook Japan and its economic stability.

"The board meeting that Advantest had to approve the transaction couldn't take place in their own offices because the electricity was down and they couldn't get in," King said. "They ended up having to meet off-site at a hotel to approve the transaction."

But, King said, Verigy shareholders decided to go forward with the acquisition anyway.

- Casey Sullivan