Emily Roberts

Corporate

Menlo Park

Emily O. Roberts is a partner in Davis Polk & Wardwell LLP's corporate practice who advises companies on industry-shaping deals. She joined the firm in 2011 straight from Stanford Law School and was a Daily Journal Top Under 40 lawyer in 2023.

She was on the Davis Polk team that won a 2020 Daily Journal CLAY award for its work on Uber Technologies, Inc.'s huge $8.1 billion IPO.

"I got excited about corporate law as a summer associate here at Davis Polk," Roberts said. "We had a hostile takeover case that was so much fun to work on, learning what levers to pull to make a deal happen, and how to influence stakeholders to do deals."

In March 2024, Roberts co-led the team that advised several underwriters in connection with Reddit Inc.'s $748 million initial public offering.

"This is a great example of the corporate markets opening up again," she said. "The stock traded up after the IPO -- an encouraging sign to others."

Also, in March 2024 Roberts led the corporate teams that advised Lucid Group Inc., a Newark-based luxury electric vehicle design, technology, engineering and manufacturing company, in its placement of $1 billion in convertible preferred stock.

Earlier, she performed a similar service in a $3 billion public offering of Lucid stock and a concurrent private placement. In June 2023, she advised Lucid in connection with a long-term strategic technology partnership in which Lucid will provide Aston Martin with powertrain and battery system technology for used in Aston Martin's electric vehicles.

Last fall she discussed deal trends at UC Berkeley Law's 2023 Fall Forum on Corporate Governance. "The macro-economic climate has become more stable," Roberts said. "That's leading more corporate CEOs to think about doing deals. No one thinks we're going back to 2021 levels, but a stable market is a good thing."

Roberts helped achieve that stability. Last March, amid the banking crisis, she played a key role in providing corporate advice to Silicon Valley Bridge Bank on a range of issues relating to its status upon the acquisition of its deposits and certain assets by First Citizens Bank. The deal completed the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation's salvage operation of the failed Silicon Valley Bank.

"Our lawyers in Washington and New York from our bank regulatory practice did much of the work, and together we played a role in getting the market more stable," Roberts said. "From the perspective of June 2024, we can look back and see a lot of different directions that could have played out. We're proud of our role in preventing a domino effect."

-- John Roemer