Jane Ross

Software giant Adobe Inc. regularly calls Ross for counsel with its complex deals.

Last year, she led the Hogan Lovells teams advising Adobe on its acquisitions of Marketo Inc. and Magento Commerce, which collectively total nearly $6.45 billion.

Marketo’s $4.75 billion sale to Adobe was one of the largest mergers and acquisitions by a California company in 2018, according to Refinitiv which tracks financial markets data and infrastructure.

The deal size does not make a difference to her strategy, Ross said.

“The size of the deal is less of a determining factor in process than the competitive landscape or competitive dynamic,” Ross said. “In large competitive deals like the Adobe transactions, we needed to have a large team because the sellers were dictating the pace of the transaction. Things needed to move very quickly.

“It was important that we had enough people on the transaction to be able to meet the client’s deadlines in order to meet the seller’s expectations,” she added. Adobe’s Marketo acquisition closed Oct. 31, just over a month after it was announced. Its $1.68 billion buy of Magento Commerce closed in June 2018, less than 30 days after it was announced.

Ross is also a skilled cross-border mergers and acquisitions attorney. She was part of the Hogan Lovells team that counseled Walmart Inc. on its $16 billion purchase of a majority stake in Flipkart, an India-based e-commerce company. The deal, completed in May 2018, was one of Walmart’s largest M&A transactions and it is also said to be one of the largest e-commerce deals in history.

“One of the most fun things about doing cross-border deals is needing to not only adapt to the new law but also figure out if the approach the client wants to take would work under these new laws,” Ross said. “The Indian culture is quite different from our culture so we needed to understand how negotiations needed to change in order to work with people in India.”

In addition to legal skills, Ross said she possesses other qualities that benefit her clients.

“They know that if they hire me to work on a transaction, they will get someone that does not delegate all of the work to more junior people,” Ross said. “They know that I will be involved with the transaction and that I will get a team involved that is suited for the work that needs to be done and they have confidence that it will get done right. Clients want to continue working with me because they trust me and they know I have their back.”

— Alexandra Applegate