Gordon Davidson is a partner in the law firm Fenwick & West and advises primarily high technology companies and life sciences companies ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies on corporate, securities, governance and transactional matters.
He has represented startups and venture capital investors in hundreds of financings. His late stage private company clients include AirBNB, Bloom Energy, Calico, GitHub, GRAIL Inc., Tanium and Uber. His venture capital clients include Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, New Enterprise Associates, Sequoia Capital and Foresite Capital. He has represented issuers and underwriters as lead counsel on over 50 initial public offerings, including as issuer’s counsel in the IPOs of Amyris Biotechnology, Electronic Arts, Facebook, Intuit, Oracle, ServiceNow, Shutterfly, SuccessFactors, Symantec, Veritas, Workday and Zuora.
In addition, Gordy has acted as lead counsel on over 100 mergers and acquisitions valued at more than $100 billion in the aggregate, including the: $19 billion acquisition of WhatsApp. by Facebook; the $17 billion acquisition by VeriSign of Network Solutions; the $13 billion acquisition by Symantec of Veritas Software in 2005 and the sale of Veritas by Symantec in 2015; the $6.9 billion acquisition by Cisco Systems of Scientific-Atlanta; and the $7.5 billion sale of GitHub to Microsoft.
Gordy has been a regular speaker on current issues in capital formation and public offerings at the Northwestern and PLI Securities Regulation Institutes and on corporate governance issues at the Stanford Directors College, taught classes on venture capital, deals, and mergers & acquisitions at the Stanford Law School, and co-chaired the Practising Law Institute programs on Private Placements and on Mergers & Acquisitions of High Technology Companies.
Gordy is a member of the State Bar of California. He has a B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering from Stanford University and J.D. from Stanford Law School. Following law school, he was a law clerk for Judge Ben C. Duniway in the United States Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco. Since then, he has practiced law at Fenwick & West, and served as its Chair from 1995 through 2013.
Richard R. Plumridge is a senior partner at the law firm of Holme, Roberts & Owen, LLP practicing in Denver and Boulder, Colorado. He joined the firm in February of 2003 after practicing corporate and securities law with Brobeck, Phleger & Harrison, LLP. He practiced in Brobeck’s San Francisco and Palo Alto offices from 1972 to 1990. He was a founder and Managing Partner in Brobeck’s New York office from 1990 to 1999 and Managing Partner of Brobeck’s Colorado office. He has been Co-Chair of the Practising Law Institute’s Private Placements national program since 1988. Mr. Plumridge represents public companies, rapidly growing private businesses, start-ups, investment bankers, and venture capitalists and has significant experience with technology companies, principally in the Internet, biotechnology, health care, computer, semiconductor, software, telecommunications, medical equipment, and retail industries.
Mr. Plumridge counsels clients in the areas of corporate and securities matters including corporate governance, mergers and acquisitions, public and private offerings of debt and equity, public company compliance, venture capital, corporate partnering, and licensing transactions. He received his J.D. from Harvard University, magna cum laude, in 1972 and his B.S.E. from Princeton University, cum laude, in 1967.