Sullivan & Cromwell is a longtime adviser to many of the icons of the telecommunications industry. We are an adviser of choice for telecommunications issuers, and rank first by value as both issuer’s counsel and underwriter’s counsel in debt and equity offerings for telecommunications issuers over the past five years. Additionally, S&C has advised on more M&A transactions by value involving telecommunications companies than any other firm globally of all time.
S&C’s leadership in the telecommunications sector was established through our involvement in nearly all of the telecom privatizations of the 1980s and 1990s, including the breakup and recombination of the Bell System constituents in the United States, as well as privatizations in Europe, Asia and Latin America, including British Telecom, France Telecom, Deutsche Telekom, Singapore Telecom, DoCoMo, China Mobile, China Telecom, China Unicom and TelMex.
Our recent achievements in the telecommunications sector include:
- advising DISH in its purchase of billions of dollars of assets from Sprint, which needed to divest major businesses to clear its deal with T-Mobile, enabling DISH to enter the U.S. wireless market as the fourth-largest cellular phone company provider;
- navigating SoftBank Group through a complex, three-way deal that raised $20 billion by monetizing its 25 percent stake in T-Mobile US, including the largest follow-on equity offering ever completed;
- guiding Intel through technology and intellectual property aspects of the $1 billion sale of its 5G smartphone modem business to Apple;
- securing just the fourth complete dismissal of a lawsuit asserting securities claims related to the U.S. Supreme Court’s Cyan decision for AT&T; and
- advising Telia in the sale of its interest in Turkcell Holding to The Turkey Wealth Fund, completing Telia’s exit from Turkey and Eurasia.
Recent Thought Leadership
Partners Jeff Scott and Julia Malkina review trends and emerging issues in private securities litigation.
- Implications of the Ninth Circuit's Qualcomm Patent Licensing Decision – Listen to podcast
Garrard Beeney, co-head of the Firm’s Intellectual Property and Technology Group, is joined by Antitrust Special Counsel Sophie Vandergrift to discuss the Ninth Circuit’s recent decision in the FTC’s suit against Qualcomm over its patent licensing program.
- New York DFS Calls for Regulation of Social Media Platforms – Read memo
To learn more about our work for Telecommunications and other Technology clients, contact Sarah Payne.