Latham & Watkins Advises Slack in its US$27.7 billion Acquisition by Salesforce
Salesforce (NYSE: CRM), the global leader in CRM, and Slack Technologies, Inc. (NYSE: WORK), the most innovative enterprise communications platform, have announced that they have entered into a definitive agreement under which Salesforce will acquire Slack. Under the terms of the agreement, Slack shareholders will receive US$26.79 in cash and 0.0776 shares of Salesforce common stock for each Slack share, representing an enterprise value of approximately US$27.7 billion based on the closing price of Salesforce’s common stock on November 30, 2020.
“We were excited to work with Slack on such a transformative transaction,” said Tad Freese, partner and co-leader of the deal team that is advising Slack. “Executing a deal of this scale required great coordination across the Latham team and we were able to draw on our unrivaled experience to meet the needs of our client.”
Latham & Watkins represents Slack in the transaction with a corporate deal team led by Bay Area partners Rick Kline, Tad Freese and Mark Bekheit, with Bay Area associates Michelle Lu, Natalie Robertson, and Melinda Vanderburg. Advice was also provided on corporate debt and derivatives matters by New York partners Gregory Rodgers and Reza Mojtabaee-Zamani, with New York associate Andrew Blumenthal; on other corporate matters by Bay Area partner Sarah Axtell; on benefits and compensation matters by Bay Area partner James Metz, with Bay Area associate Erik Ward; on tax matters by Bay Area partner Grace Lee, with Los Angeles associate Abigail Friedman and Boston associate Jeremiah Cowen; on technology transactions matters by Bay Area partner Anthony Klein with Bay Area associate Arielle Singh; on data privacy matters by Washington, D.C. counsel Marissa Boynton; on government contracts matters by Washington, D.C. counsel Kyle Jefcoat; on FCPA matters by Washington, D.C. counsel Timothy McCarten; on economic sanctions matters by Washington, D.C. partner Les Carnegie; and on foreign direct investment matters by Hamburg counsel Jana Dammann de Chapto.