Sonia K. Nijjar

Ms. Nijjar also advises public and private corporate clients with respect to securities law issues, corporate governance and other general corporate matters.

Her transactions include the representation of:

• Activision Blizzard Inc. in its pending $75 billion acquisition by Microsoft Corporation;
• Elon Musk in his $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, Inc.;
• Xilinx in its $49 billion acquisition by Advanced Micro Devices;
• 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;
• Intel Corporation in its:
  • agreement with Brookfield Infrastructure Partners L.P. to jointly invest approximately $30 billion to create a first-of-its-kind Semiconductor Co-Investment Program that introduces a new funding model to the semiconductor industry;
  • $15.3 billion acquisition of Mobileye;
  • $4.2 billion spin-off and joint venture with TPG Capital to form the independent cybersecurity company McAfee; and
  • sale of its Wind River subsidiary to TPG Capital;
• Netflix, Inc. in its acquisitions of Scanline VFX and Animal Logic;
• Livongo in its $18.5 billion acquisition by Teladoc Health;
• Credit Karma in its $8.1 billion acquisition by Intuit and the $50 million divestiture of its tax business, Credit Karma Tax, to Square, Inc.;
• Willis Towers Watson in the pending $4 billion sale of its treaty reinsurance business Willis Re to Gallagher;
• Brookfield Asset Management Reinsurance Partners in its $5.1 billion acquisition of American National Group;
• Sabre Corporation in its sale of the AirCentre suite of flight and crew management software solutions to CAE Inc. for $392.5 million;
• NXP Semiconductors in its $1.76 billion acquisition of Marvell Technology Group’s WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity assets;
• Visa in its proposed but terminated $5.3 billion acquisition of Plaid;
• Silver Lake Partners in its acquisition of a majority stake in ServiceMax from GE Digital;
• Nightstar Therapeutics in its $877 million acquisition by Biogen;
• Amadeus IT Group in its $1.52 billion acquisition of TravelClick from Thoma Bravo;
• Permira Funds in the $1.75 billion acquisition of Duff & Phelps;
• Broadcom Corporation in its $37 billion sale to Avago Technologies Limited;
• Nokia Corporation in the $7.2 billion sale of its devices and services business to Microsoft Corporation;
• LSI Corporation in its $6.6 billion acquisition by Avago Technologies Limited (Singapore);
• SanDisk Corporation in its $19 billion acquisition by Western Digital Corporation and its $1.1 billion acquisition of Fusion-io, Inc.;
• Hewlett-Packard Company in its acquisition of Voltage Security, Inc.;
• XL Group in connection with the $570 million sale of XL Insurance’s (Bermuda) wholly owned subsidiary XL Life Reinsurance to GreyCastle Holdings;
• the special committee of the board of directors of Steinway Musical Instruments in the $438 million acquisition of Steinway by an affiliate of Kohlberg & Company;
• Global Indemnity plc in its acquisition of American Reliable Insurance Company from Assurant, Inc.;
• SCOR Global Life U.S. Holdings Inc., a subsidiary of SCOR SE, in its $750 million acquisition of Generali U.S. Holdings, Inc.;
• Hamilton Insurance Group in its acquisition of S.A.C. Re and its initial formation and capital raise;
• Jackson National Life Insurance Company in its $621 million acquisition of the U.S. life reinsurance operations of Swiss Re; and
• Harbor Point Limited in its $3 billion merger of equals with Max Capital Group.

Ms. Nijjar was recognized as a 2022 Mergers and Acquisitions MVP by Law360. She also was recognized by The Deal on its 2022 Women in Dealmaking list, as well as by The Hollywood Reporter as a 2022 Top Dealmaker. Additionally, The American Lawyer recognized Ms. Nijjar as a 2021 Dealmaker of the Year in connection with her co-representation of Livongo Health in its acquisition by Teladoc Health and, in 2021, she was named to Bloomberg Law’s inaugural They’ve Got Next: The 40 Under 40 list, honoring young attorneys nationwide who “represent the best of the future of the legal profession.”

The Daily Journal has recognized her multiple times as one of the Top Women Lawyers in California and also as one of its 40 Under 40, an annual award given to a select group of California’s rising star attorneys. The Daily Journal also has recognized Ms. Nijjar with three California Lawyer Attorneys of the Year (CLAY) awards for innovative work on behalf of: Livongo Health in its acquisition by Teladoc Health (2021); Intel Corporation in its acquisition of Mobileye N.V. (2018); and Broadcom Corporation in its acquisition by Avago Technologies (2016).

She was named to Euromoney’s 2021 Women in Business Law Expert Guide as a leading global M&A practitioner.

Earlier in her career, Ms. Nijjar received Rising Star awards from both Law360 and the South Asian Bar Association of North America. She was featured as one of the Silicon Valley Business Journal’s 2018 Women of Influence, an annual accolade honoring Silicon Valley’s most influential business and community leaders.

In addition, she was a key member of the deal teams honored in connection with The Recorder’s 2016 and 2017 Corporate Department of the Year contests in which Skadden’s California corporate team took top honors in a number of categories.

She also is annually recognized in IFLR1000, which named her a Woman Leader of 2022, The Legal 500 U.S. and Lawdragon 500 Leading Lawyers in America. She also has been named repeatedly as one of Lawdragon’s 500 Leading Dealmakers in America.

Ms. Nijjar serves as co-head of the firm’s Palo Alto Hiring Committee.