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Mr. Russell joined the Firm’s Business Department as a partner in 2005. Mr. Russell has considerable experience advising business clients on the structuring, negotiation and documentation of complex transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, alliances, securities offerings, venture capital and business formation transactions for public and private clients, domestic and foreign. He has worked with a variety of industries, ranging from publishing, e-commerce, healthcare, banking, fast food, to manufacturing, in transactions ranging in size from a few million dollars to over $40 billion.
Mr. Russell’s recent work has included JDS Uniphase’s $475 million zero coupon convertible note offering, $41 billion acquisition of SDL, $17 billion acquisition of E-TEK and its $2.7 billion acquisition of Optical Coating Laboratory. Mr. Russell also worked on the $3.9 billion formation of NBC Internet, NBC Internet’s subsequent $600 million follow-on offering, Razorfish’s $700 million acquisition of International Integration, Smart Modular Technologies’ $2 billion acquisition by Solectron, and the $3 billion recapitalization of Blue Cross of California. He has also worked on numerous middle market and venture capital and start-up transactions in a variety of industries, which have ranged from Marubeni America Corporation’s $145 million acquisition of PLM Trailer Leasing to Bank of America’s $2.5 million investment in Velocity HSI.
He also has special expertise in working with international clients investing in the U.S., including most recently on the acquisition of cheatplanet.com as well as the acquisitions of Guitar World and Guitar One magazines and the sale of Business 2.0 magazine for Future plc and the acquisitions of various staffing companies around the U.S. for Harvey Nash Group plc. Earlier transactions have varied from a series of convertible bond offerings for Far Eastern issuers amounting to $1.6 billion, a $1 billion joint venture for the leading Russian truck manufacturer, a $200 million sale of a hospital group in the U.K., a sale of a $50 million mortgage portfolio in the U.K., and an acquisition of a $30 million credit card portfolio in Puerto Rico.
Mr. Russell is admitted in California and in England.
PROFESSIONAL ACTIVITIES
Since 1984 Mr. Russell has practiced as a corporate finance lawyer, first in the London office of Clifford Chance (including assignments to its Amsterdam office and to Lloyd’s of London) and then in the London and Miami offices of Baker & McKenzie. In 1994, Mr. Russell joined Morrison & Foerster and worked between then and August 1999 in the firm’s Los Angeles office (including assignments in the Hong Kong and New York offices). Mr. Russell was in the San Francisco office of Morrison & Foerster from 1999 to 2005 and had been a partner there since 2000.
EDUCATION
Mr. Russell graduated in law from Oxford University, England, in 1980.
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