Joseph Halloum Bio

Joseph Halloum leads the M&A/Private Equity practice in Silicon Valley and concentrates his practice on private equity and public company mergers and acquisitions. Over the course of his career, Joseph has represented leading private equity funds and their portfolio companies in a full range of corporate transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, recapitalizations, leveraged financings, and reorganizations. His representative private equity clients have included: Vista Equity Partners, HGGC, Ares Management, Permira, CVC Capital, and Mulliez family office portfolio company Foundever, among others. In addition, Joseph has represented leading public companies as strategic buyers and sellers in significant transactions and counseled senior management and boards of directors on complex corporate governance matters. Joseph's representative public company clients have included: ServiceNow, Ericsson, Broadcom, Keysight Technologies, and Zymergen, among others. As a result of Joseph's diverse client base, he is familiar with the sensitivities of all deal parties in negotiations and helps clients to anticipate and resolve issues. He has extensive experience advising clients across a very broad range of industry sectors, including technology, software, artificial intelligence, life sciences, insurance, fintech, telecom, education, commodities, infrastructure and consumer products. Joseph is a nationally-recognized M&A and Private Equity advisor who has led on several of the largest and most notable technology and life sciences deals over the last several years. Joseph is a member of the firm's Private Equity/M&A and Public Company practice groups, as well as the Technology and Life Sciences industry teams. Joseph is regularly sought after for his broad-based transactional experience in high-profile and complex M&A and private equity investments, including LBOs, strategic sales, carve-outs, tender offers, take-privates and exits, joint ventures, domestic and cross-border transactions, growth equity, PIPEs and toe-hold investments in public companies, IPOs and SPAC transactions, debt and equity financings, restructurings and recapitalizations, and SEC compliance matters. He has also represented numerous companies and boards in connection with large shareholder matters and activist defense and unsolicited takeover situations, the majority of which remain confidential. Among publicly disclosed situations, he has advised TriNet Group with matters involving its largest shareholder Atairos Group, Del Frisco’s in its settlement with Engaged Capital, Yahoo! in its settlement with Third Point, Autodesk in its settlements with Sachem Head Capital and Eminence Capital, and Tessera Technologies in its settlement with Starboard Value. Beyond his legal practice, Joseph is committed to shaping the future of legal education and supporting aspiring legal professionals as a part-time lecturer in the Fall semester teaching M&A at Berkeley Law. Following strong praise and popularity with Berkeley Law students, Joseph will also teach M&A at Stanford Law in the Spring of 2026. In addition to teaching, Joseph is committed to thought leadership and empowering the Bay Area legal community through his creation of The GC Roundtable, in partnership with Stanford Law. As the Founder and Co-Chair of The GC Roundtable, Joseph is intimately involved with bringing together chief legal officers and general counsel from tech companies and PE firms in the Bay Area to meet, network and discuss the most pressing issues at the forefront of business and law. Joseph is also a strong supporter of his alma mater, UC Berkeley, where he founded and oversees the Emma and Joseph H. Halloum Business Competition and Negotiation Competition at Berkeley Law. The Business Competition is the first and only competition in the nation that joins together students from a university's law school and graduate business school in a negotiation case competition to tackle a challenging real-world transaction.