Steve Blake is a Partner in the Firm’s Litigation Practice. He has extensive experience resolving high-stakes shareholder litigation and securities regulatory matters. Steve regularly advises corporations, financial institutions, funds and their advisors in connection with mergers and acquisitions, initial public offerings, legal compliance and commercial disputes. He focuses on complex disputes involving corporate crises, cross- border transactions, business valuation and/or accounting matters. Steve also regularly represents entities and individuals in investigations before the SEC, stock exchanges and FINRA concerning shareholder disclosure, accounting fraud, corruption and insider trading.
Steve frequently writes and lectures on stockholder litigation issues, and is the author of the quarterly “Stock Block” column in The Recorder. Steve’s recent columns “Along Came SPACs, and Then SPAC Litigation,” “Challenges to Corporate Decision-Making in the Face of Increasingly Polarized Responses to ESG Initiatives,” and “Burgeoning ‘Caremark’ Claims Likely to Drive Stockholder Demands” have been widely read. Steve is Co-Head of the Firm’s Asia Litigation Practice and is also Co-Chair of the Firm’s Knowledge & Innovation Committee.
Representative experience includes:
- The Board of Directors of PG&E Corporation in securities and derivative litigation arising out of wildfires in Northern California;
- MultiPlan in connection with seminal Delaware Chancery litigation over its 2020 de-SPAC business combination with Churchill Capital III;
- Velocity Financial in the first dismissal of a COVID-19 pandemic-related securities class action related to its January 2020 IPO;
- Silver Lake in securities, M&A and/or appraisal litigation concerning Dell, AMC, Unity, GoDaddy, Tintri, Skype and other portfolio companies;
- Hellman & Friedman in M&A litigation concerning Ultimate Software, Control4 and At Home;
- JOYY in the first federal appellate decision discounting the weight to be given to anonymous short seller allegations;
- Underwriter syndicates co-led by Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley in multiple securities litigations concerning the initial public offerings of Etsy and Zynga;
- Alibaba Group in multiple securities litigations concerning its $25 billion New York Stock Exchange 2014 initial public offering; the 2020 cancellation of Ant Group’s announced $34 billion IPO; and a Chinese government antitrust investigation; and
- Microsoft in M&A litigation concerning its 2023 acquisition of Activision Blizzard, 2021 acquisition of Nuance Communications and 2016 acquisition of LinkedIn
Steve was recognized as a one of Bloomberg Law’s “40 Under 40” for 2022, a 2021 Law360 “Rising Star” in Securities. Steve is also recognized by Euromoney’s Benchmark Litigation as a “Future Star,” and was a repeat honoree on their “40 & Under List.” He was also honored by the Daily Journal as a 2023 “Leading Commercial Litigator” and was named a 2022 “Lawyer on the Fast Track” by The Recorder. Steve is consistently recognized by The Legal 500 in both M&A Litigation and Securities Litigation, and as a “Rising Star” in Northern California securities litigation by Super Lawyers. He received his J.D., summa cum laude, from the University of San Francisco in 2008.
Updated Oct 2024
