Published: 2013-10-29 19:44:32
Originally Researched: October 28, 2013 11:15
Just some simple background Research I pulled together for my our initial meeting with Mark...
Mark C. Stevens represents companies, ranging from newly formed startup teams to mature public companies, venture capitalists and investment banks involved in the digital media and software industries, with particular focus on complex transactions. As a lawyer and a business principal, Mark has led teams handling merger, acquisition, and divestiture transactions with total announced value well in excess of $30 billion. He has directed dozens of initial public offerings and hundreds of strategic alliance transactions, ranging from technology and distribution partnerships to multinational joint venture transactions.
Business Lawyer, Partner at Fenwick & West
San Francisco Bay AreaLaw Practice
Mr. Stevens' varied background includes work from the legal, business and venture capital sides of the table. In addition to 25 years of legal practice at Fenwick & West, he was Executive Vice President of Business and Corporate Development at Excite@Home and a venture partner at GGV Capital. Mr. Stevens has also served on Boards of Directors of several public and private companies.
Mr Stevens is listed in the AlwaysOn Power Players West list as one of the top attorneys who support the Global Silicon Valley's entrepreneurs, in Best Lawyers in America for corporate law, leveraged buyouts and private equity, in Euromoney’s Legal Expert Guides as one of the top M&A attorneys in California and is named by Chambers USA and Chambers Global as one of the top corporate attorneys in California, in Legal 500 as one of the top attorneys in the US for Interactive Entertainment and in Law & Politics as one of northern California's "Super Lawyers".
Take Mark Stevens, for example. The 45-year-old lawyer left a manic $10 million-a-year corporate practice at Palo Alto’s Fenwick & West in 1999 for the lure of a top job at Excite@Home, then a hot search engine and cable Internet service provider.
The company ended up being one of the first big Internet ventures to tank, and Stevens rode it to the bottom. After conducting six rounds of layoffs in his own department, he left in 2001, three months before the company went bankrupt. “The turning point for me was when I could no longer tell a story that I believed in,” Stevens says.
After trying his hand at venture capital and handling some deals part time for an old client, he rejoined Fenwick last year, but not before interviewing with some of the dozen or more national firms that had moved into the Valley in the meantime.
