Ben Beerle

Ben’s practice focuses on mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, minority investments and other complex corporate transactions, primarily in the technology and life sciences industries. He represents strategic and financial buyers and sellers in public and private acquisitions and has significant cross-border experience.

Ben’s representative M&A transactions include advising:

Technology

• Cornerstone OnDemand on its:
  • Sale to Clearlake Capital for approximately $5.2 billion
  • Acquisition of Saba for approximately $1.4 billion
  • Acquisition of Clustree
  • Acquisition of Workpop
• Zoom on its announced and then terminated agreement to acquire Five9 in an all-stock transaction valued at approximately $14.7 billion
• Confluent on its agreement to sell to IBM for approximately $11 billion
• Uber on its:
  • Acquisition of Transplace for approximately $2.25 billion
  • Acquisition of Drizly for approximately $1.1 billion
  • Joint venture with Yandex
  • Acquisition and subsequent divestiture of JUMP
  • Reorganization of Careem, its Middle East subsidiary, into separate ride-hailing and super app business units in connection with proposed $400m investment by e& in the super app business
• Twilio on its:
  • Acquisition of Segment for approximately $3.2 billion
  • Acquisition of Boku Identity
• Yelp on its:
  • Agreement to acquire Hatch
  • Acquisition of RepairPal for $80 million
• Fastly on its acquisition of Signal Sciences for approximately $775 million
• Tableau on its sale to Salesforce for approximately $15.7 billion
• Ellie Mae on its sale to Thoma Bravo for approximately $3.7 billion
• Dropbox on its acquisitions of HelloSign for $230 million, Promoted, Reclaim, DocSend, Hypertools (dba Command E) and King Street Labs (dba FormSwift)
• Mandiant on its sale to FireEye for approximately $1.2 billion
• Netflix on its acquisitions of Boss Fight Entertainment and Spry Fox
• Patreon on its acquisition of Moment
• Red Canary on its sale to Zscaler
• Measurabl on its acquisition of Hatch Data
• Evite on its sale to Francisco Partners
• Accel Partners in connection with Qualtrics take-private transaction

Healthcare and life sciences

• RayzeBio on its sale to Bristol-Myers Squibb for approximately $4.1 billion
• Carmot Therapeutics on its sale to Roche for up to $3.1 billion (including milestones)
• Apollo Endosurgery on its sale to Boston Scientific for approximately $615 million
• Tmunity on its sale to Kite
• Principia Biopharma on its sale to Sanofi for approximately $3.7 billion
• Forty Seven on its sale to Gilead for approximately $4.9 billion
• Immune Design on its sale to Merck for approximately $300 million
• Alumis on its acquisition of ACELYRIN in an all-stock transaction
• The special committee of the board of directors of Checkpoint Therapeutics on Checkpoint’s up to $416 million cross-border sale to Sun Pharmaceutical Industries
• Abaxis on its sale to Zoetis for approximately $2 billion
• Medivation on its sale to Pfizer for approximately $14 billion
• Horizon Pharma on its:
  • Acquisition of Raptor Pharmaceutical for approximately $800 million 
  • Acquisition of Hyperion Therapeutics for approximately $1.1 billion
  • Acquisition of River Vision for approximately $145 million
• Jazz Pharmaceuticals on its acquisition of Celator Pharmaceuticals for approximately $1.5 billion
• Cardioxyl Pharmaceuticals on its sale to Bristol Myers Squibb for up to $2 billion
• BioMarin Pharmaceutical on its acquisition of Inozyme Pharma for approximately $270 million
• Candid Therapeutics on its merger with Vignette Bio and TRC2004 for $370 million

Consumer and retail

• The Clorox Company on its agreement to acquire GOJO Industries, makers of Purell, for $2.25 billion
• ChannelAdvisor on its sale to CommerceHub for $725 million
• Sweetgreen on its acquisition of Spyce
• Sazerac on its:
  • Acquisition of Svedka
  • Acquisition of BuzzBallz
  • Acquisition of portfolio brands from Diageo for $550 million
  • Acquisition of Paul Masson Grande Amber Brandy brand from Constellation Brands for $225 million
• WineDirect on its sale to FullSteam
• Peet’s Coffee & Tea on its acquisition of Mighty Leaf Tea
• Levi Strauss & Co. on its acquisition of Beyond Yoga

Manufacturing

• Tempo Automation on its:
  • Acquisition of Compass AC Holdings (dba Advanced Circuits)
  • Acquisition of Whizz Systems

Financial advisory

• Morgan Stanley as financial advisor to:
  • Couchbase on its sale to Haveli Investments for $1.5 billion
  • Secureworks on its sale to Sophos for $859 million 
  • Sumo Logic on its sale to Francisco Partners for $1.7 billion
  • UserTesting on its sale to Thoma Bravo for $1.3 billion
  • Broadcom on its acquisition of Vmware for $61 billion
  • Poly on its sale to HP for approximately $3.3 billion
  • Livongo on its sale to Teladoc for approximately $18.5 billion
  • Intuit on its acquisition of Mailchimp for $12 billion
  • Entegris on its acquisition of CMC Materials for approximately $6.5 billion
• Qatalyst Partners as financial advisor to:
  • PROS on its sale to Thoma Bravo for $1.4 billion
  • Splunk on its sale to Cisco for $26 billion
  • Hewlett Packard Enterprise on its acquisition of Juniper Networks for $16.2 billion
  • Cvent on its sale to Blackstone for $4.6 billion
  • iRobot on its agreement to sell to Amazon for $1.7 billion
  • Vonage on its sale to Ericsson for approximately $6.2 billion
  • Fitbit on its sale to Google for approximately $2.1 billion
  • Apptio on its sale to Vista Equity Partners for approximately $2 billion

Before joining Cooley, Ben was an associate in the San Francisco office of a global law firm.