Kenton J. King

PALO ALTO - Kenton J. King has long been regarded as one of the top mergers and acquisitions attorneys in the country, who is known for putting together numerous multibillion-dollar deals in the high-tech industry in Silicon Valley and beyond.

The last several years have been especially busy, he said. "Particularly for our practice in technology in Palo Alto ... it's been crazy well beyond normal," he said.

He credits the craziness to the growing confidence among CEOs after the first few months of the pandemic and easy financing becoming available then.

Mergers and acquisitions are like any other market, he said. "The more M&A there is, the more M&A it generates."

For instance, the semiconductor industry has been consolidating for several years, King said. "That's driven in large part by the capital-intensive nature of semiconductors now. The product cycles, the level of investment that's required has just grown exponentially over the years."

In 2015, he represented Broadcom in its $37 billion acquisition by Avago Technologies, considered one of the largest high-tech deals ever. More recently, he represented Xilinx when it was acquired by Advanced Micro Devices. That all-stock deal was expected to be worth $35 billion, but it closed in February at $47 billion as AMD's stock price rose.

One issue for the semiconductor industry is that only about 10% of computer chips are manufactured in the U.S. Another 80% are manufactured by one company in Taiwan.

To help address that issue, Intel is building a semiconductor fabrication plant in Arizona. King and Skadden financing partners in New York and Washington advised Intel on a unique project finance transaction with Brookfield Infrastructure Partners, announced in August, to fund the plant.

"It's the second largest project finance deal that's ever been done. It's the first ever done in the semiconductor industry," he said.

King's largest M&A deal this year was also the biggest M&A deal of any kind since 2019 and the largest technology deal ever. He advised Activision Blizzard, Inc. in its acquisition by Microsoft for $75 billion in cash.

The deal demonstrates what a dynamic and competitive market video gaming has become. "It's larger than live sporting events, concerts, TV and movies combined," King said. "It's a huge market, and Activision is one of the largest companies in it. That's why it's worth something like $75 billion to Microsoft."