Los Angeles, California, United States
Marc Williams is a shareholder in Buchalter’s Corporate Practice Group, practicing in the firm’s Seattle, Los Angeles and Portland offices. He advises companies and investors in securities, corporate, and mergers and acquisitions. Marc’s engagements have run the spectrum from serving as special counsel to the audit committee of one of the world’s best-known consumer products companies, to public offerings and related reporting engagements, to counseling successful family businesses and their owners. Marc has represented issuers in public offerings as large as $600 million and in private placements of more than $1 billion. The total value of Marc’s M&A engagements is rapidly approaching $10 billion. Marc has also represented issuers and merger constituents in “fairness hearings” and related securities matters before the California Department of Financial Protection and Innovation and the Oregon Division of Financial Regulation. Representative capital markets transactions include a $480 million subordinated note offering by JELD-Wen and initial public offerings including Clearwire Corporation ($600 million) and HomeStreet, Inc. ($100 million). Marc’s mergers and acquisitions experience includes the $900 million sale of assets by an investment fund operated by the Alaska Permanent Fund Corporation; more than 20 community bank mergers; a 10-year activism defense leading to the auction and $660 million sale of Pope Resources, a 160-year-old timberland owner and manager; representation of a founding family in initiating and promoting the $850 million sale of Altabancorp; and numerous auction processes leading to the sales of both public and private companies. Marc’s practice focuses primarily on public and mature private companies, and he has a particular expertise in banking and other financial businesses, including registered investment advisers and investment funds. He also has completed numerous transactions in the technology, aviation, energy/natural resources, manufacturing and hospitality sectors. Marc has extensive experience advising both investors and targets in shareholder activism campaigns and unsolicited takeover proposals, including the successful defenses of campaigns against Pope Resources, McCormick & Schmick’s, Willamette Community Bank and BEO Bancorp. He also has served as special counsel to boards of directors and committees for some of their most difficult and strategically sensitive circumstances. Marc lives with his wife and their five children near Los Angeles, where Marc is active in a variety of charitable organizations.
M&A and Securities Lawyer
Partner and Chair of Securities and Corporate Finance Practice Group
US Naval Flight Officer in A-6E carrier-based strike aircraft