Cambridge tech success story ARM Holdings has appointed senior Symantec Corporation lawyer Carolyn Herzog as its new general counsel (GC) as previous legal chief Philip Davis departs.
On the back of its £24.3bn takeover by Japanese telecoms giant SoftBank Group, the tech company has hired Herzog to head up its legal function. She was previously deputy GC and chief compliance officer of Symantec, spending 17 years at the Fortune 500 cyber security firm.
Herzog joined in January and will lead the ARM team from San Jose, California, heading up a group of around 70 legal professionals.
ARM’s current GC and company secretary Philip Davis is to step down on 31 March after a handover period. The veteran in-house lawyer joined in September 2014, having previously been legal director of the enterprise division of Vodafone from 2012 and GC of Cable & Wireless Worldwide prior to its acquisition.
Davis told Legal Business: ‘ARM is a wonderful company with a fantastic future under SoftBank, who are already helping invest in new opportunities, and I am happy to be handing over to Carolyn. ARM is blessed with a brilliant legal team and I have had a great time leading them.’
ARM, which develops microchips and semiconductors for the likes of Intel and Nvidia, was bought out last August in one the year’s landmark technology deals. The company emerged from Cambridge’s ‘Silicon Fen’ of tech startups in the 1990s and now has revenues of more than £968m and 4,000 staff.
Considered the UK’s tech flagbearer, the company was acquired by SoftBank in one of the largest pieces of public M&A in the UK that year. Slaughter and May M&A heavyweight Steve Cooke and corporate partner Chris McGaffin advised ARM with Davis Polk & Wardwell. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer acted for SoftBank along with Morrison & Foerster.
Last year, ARM formed its first formal legal panel appointing firms including Mills & Reeve and Fieldfisher. ARM has launched its own spree of acquisitions in 2017, buying out Swedish internet of things startup Mistbase with advice from Bird & Bird.
matthew.field@legalease.co.uk