2020 M&A Annual Review

Named “Japan International Law Advisers of the Year” by Chambers Asia- Pacific 2020 Awards—for the eighth time in the nine years the distinction has been awarded, including six years in a row. Morrison & Foerster is ranked Band 1 for Corporate/M&A: International in Japan. Chambers Asia-Pacific 2020 SOFTBANK As primary outside counsel, we are advising Japan-based SoftBank Group Corp. and SoftBank Vision Fund (collectively, “SoftBank”) on the $40 billion sale of Arm Limited, a UK-headquartered multinational semiconductor and software design company, to NVIDIA (Nasdaq: NVDA). The combination brings together NVIDIA’s leading AI computing platform with Arm’s vast central processing unit ecosystem to create the premier computing company for the age of AI, accelerating innovation while expanding into large, high-growth markets. We previously served as lead counsel to SoftBank in its acquisition of Arm for £24 billion, the first large-scale M&A transaction to be announced in the UK following the Brexit vote in 2016. We also advised SoftBank on numerous other transactions in 2020, including investments in Acesso Digital, a Brazilian digital identity SaaS startup; AlphaCredit, a Mexican Fintech company that provides consumer loans and financing solutions; Behavox, a UK-based, AI-driven platform that enables companies to aggregate, analyze, and act on organizational data; Cortex, a Brazilian data science company; Kavak, a Mexican online car platform; Karius, an American life sciences company focused on conquering infectious diseases through the use of sequencing to analyze microbial cell-free DNA; and VTEX, a Brazilian e-commerce platform. We also advised SoftBank on the sale of majority stakes in Boston Dynamics, an American engineering and robotics design company, and Brightstar Corp., an American leader in end-to-end device lifecycle solutions for carriers, retailers, and enterprises managing mobile devices.