Kenton J King

Lawyer information

Practice Areas

Ken King is widely recognized as one of the country's leading M&A attorneys, having handled numerous groundbreaking and largest-ever transactions, primarily in the technology sector. He frequently represents companies and boards in connection with activist and unsolicited takeover situations. Representative matters over the last several years include: BuzzFeed, Inc. in connection with the acquisition of the HuffPost business from Verizon Media; Xilinx in its $35 billion acquisition by Advanced Micro Devices; Xperi in its $3 billion merger of equals with TiVo; Zayo Group Holdings in its $14.3 billion acquisition by affiliates of private equity funds Digital Colony Partners and the EQT Infrastructure IV fund, and its $1.4 billion sale of zColo to DataBank, Ltd.; Visa in its proposed, but terminated, $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid; NXP in its proposed, but terminated $47 billion acquisition by Qualcomm; Intel in numerous matters, including its $1 billion acquisition of its smartphone modem business by Apple and $15.3 billion acquisition of Mobileye; SanDisk in its $19 billion acquisition by Western Digital; and Broadcom in its $37 billion acquisition by Avago.

Mr. King was the recipient of the M&A Lifetime Achievement Award at The Deal Awards in 2018. The Recorder recognized him as a California Trailblazer in 2020 and The National Law Journal recognized him as a Mergers and Acquisitions Trailblazer in 2017, noting his decades of groundbreaking work in Silicon Valley. Chambers USA 2021 ranks him as the only Star Individual for M&A in the San Francisco Bay Area and recognizes Skadden’s Palo Alto M&A practice as the only Band 1 Corporate/M&A: The Elite practice in the region.

On the strength of feedback from his clients, Mr. King was recognized by the BTI Consulting Group as a 2021 M&A Client Service All-Star.

He led the deal teams recognized by the Daily Journal with California Lawyer Attorneys of the Year (CLAY) awards for innovative work on behalf of Broadcom Corporation in its acquisition by Avago Technologies (2016) and Intel Corporation in its acquisition of Mobileye N.V. (2018). In connection with The Recorder’s 2016 and 2017 Corporate Department of the Year accolades, Mr. King also was recognized as one of California’s Trusted Advisers, “the lawyers clients turn to for strategic counsel and valued industry insights.”

He was named by the Daily Journal as one of the Top 10 Lawyers of the Decade and appears on its annual list of the Top 100 Lawyers in California. The Recorder has recognized him as an Attorney of the Year and California Lawyer named him one of the top corporate and M&A lawyers in the state (in a group of only nine attorneys listed). In 2013 and 2017, he received a Client Choice award in the M&A category from International Law Office and Lexology. He is recognized annually in The Best Lawyers in America, which named him the 2018 Mergers and Acquisitions Lawyer of the Year for the San Jose region.

Mr. King also has been recognized in virtually every other major legal ranking guide, including Chambers Global, The Legal 500 U.S., The International Who’s Who of Business Lawyers, IFLR1000, the PLC Cross-border Mergers and Acquisitions Handbook and Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America, in which he was named a Leading Dealmaker in 2021. He also was named to the Lawdragon Hall of Fame in 2018 and recognized as a Lawdragon Legend in 2017.

Personal

JD, U.C. Berkeley School of Law, 1987 (Editor in Chief, California Law Review; Order of the Coif); BA, Stanford University.

Languages Spoken

Japanese, English