Annie Villanueva Jeffers

She also advises public and private companies, as well as individual senior executives, on matters relating to race and gender discrimination, breaches of noncompete and non-solicitation agreements, separation and release agreements, settlement agreements, workplace culture, retaliation and wrongful termination. 

Ms. Villanueva was selected to Bloomberg Law’s 2023 edition of its They’ve Got Next 40 Under 40 list, named by Law360 as a 2023 national Rising Star in Employment and listed among the Lawdragon 500 Leading Corporate Employment Lawyers in 2024. In addition, the Daily Journal recognized her as a Top Labor and Employment Lawyer in 2023 and 2024, a Top Woman Lawyer in 2023 and one of its Top 40 Under 40 in 2022.

Her representative matters include:

• Activision Blizzard Inc. in its $75 billion acquisition by Microsoft Corporation
• Elon Musk in his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Inc.
• Broadcom Corporation in its $37 billion sale to Avago Technologies Limited. Ms. Villanueva was a key member of the deal team recognized by the Daily Journal with a California Lawyer Attorneys of the Year (CLAY) award for innovative lawyering
• Coherent in its initially announced $5.7 billion sale to Lumentum, followed by Coherent’s subsequent responses to competing acquisition proposals from MKS Instruments, II-VI and Lumentum in a three-party bidding war culminating in Coherent’s $7.1 billion sale to II-VI
• BuzzFeed in its acquisition of HuffPost
• FaZe Clan Inc. in its merger with B. Riley Principal 150 Merger Corp. at an equity value of $1 billion
• Visa Inc. in its proposed but terminated $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid Inc.
• Cavium, Inc. in its $6 billion acquisition by Marvell Technology Group Ltd.
• Xilinx, Inc. in its $49 billion acquisition by Advanced Micro Devices, Inc.
• Intel Corporation in its $15.3 billion acquisition of Mobileye, N.V. Ms. Villanueva was a member of the deal team recognized by the Daily Journal with a CLAY award for this matter; its proposed but terminated $5.4 billion acquisition of Tower Semiconductor; its $4.2 billion spin-off and joint venture with TPG Capital, L.P. to form the independent cybersecurity company McAfee; in its sale of Wind River Systems, Inc. to TPG Capital, L.P.; $1 billion sale of its smartphone modem business to Apple Inc. and its $150 million sale of its home gateway platform division to MaxLinear, Inc.
• PayPal Holdings, Inc. in its $4 billion acquisition of Honey Science Corporation; $400 million acquisition of Hyperwallet Systems Inc.; its $2.2 billion acquisition of iZettle AB; and its acquisition of an artificial intelligence technology company
• Netflix, Inc. in its acquisitions of Animal Logic and Scanline VFX
• Viking Cruises, Ltd. in its $500 million investment from TPG Capital, L.P. and Canada Pension Plan Investment Board
• Silver Lake Partners in its acquisition of a majority stake in ServiceMax, Inc. from GE Digital LLC
• Bytedance (the parent company of TikTok) in a variety of employment counseling matters
• Spotify Technology S.A. in its acquisitions of Loudr.fm and Cutler Media, LLC
• Wells Fargo Bank, N.A. in connection with the $1.2 billion carve-out sale of its Institutional Retirement & Trust business to an affiliate of Principal Financial Group, Inc.
• The Middleby Corporation in connection with more than 25 matters, including its $380 million acquisition of Viking Range Corporation; its $1 billion acquisition of Taylor Company from UTC Climate, Controls & Security; its acquisition of Lynx Grills, Inc. from Century Park Capital Partners, LLC; and its acquisitions of Follett Corporation, CVP Systems, Inc., Globe Food Equipment Company, Burford Corporation and Hinds-Bock Corporation

Ms. Villanueva frequently writes and presents on developing issues in labor and employment law, including equal pay audits, gender pay gap disclosure issues and employee speech within and outside of the workplace. She is the editor of the Labor and Employment Law Group’s Employment Flash publication. She also has published labor and employment-related articles in several magazines, journals and internal publications, including Risk & Compliance, New York Law Journal and Skadden’s Insights publication.