Eric Stiff Bio

Eric J. Stiff is a partner in the San Francisco, Sacramento, and Los Angeles offices of Lewis Brisbois and National Vice-Chair of the Firm’s Securities & Corporate Finance Practice group. He represents privately held and publicly traded companies in transactions involving a variety of practice areas, including mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, capital markets and securities, venture capital, private equity, commercial lending, intellectual property, and health care. With over 25 years of deal experience, Eric and his team provide buyer and seller clients with all the support they need to guide them through the intricacies of the merger and acquisition process, from the preliminary and early stages of initiating an M&A transaction, letters of intent and term sheets, through due diligence review, transaction structuring and tax planning, to negotiating purchase price, earn-outs, roll-over equity, representations and warranties, indemnification obligations and the many other critical issues and conditions necessary to successfully close a transaction and planning for post-closing transition and integration. He regularly advices Founders, CEOs, CFOs, management teams, boards of directors and other advisors seeking to eventually buy or sell a business in management of all their day-to-day corporate legal functions, as outside general counsel. He has represented numerous early stage, emerging growth, and large established corporations (e.g. Fortune 100) and their investors on a wide assortment of venture capital, private equity and capital raising transactions, strategic partnerships, exit strategies and liquidity events. Eric represents businesses and investors that operate in a wide variety of industries, including healthcare (providers and payors), managed care, technology, biotechnology, software, hardware, internet, manufacturing, logistics, and aerospace. He has assisted many highly regulated clients in various matters including, (i) M&A, joint ventures, reorganizations, commercial loans, credit facilities and financings; (ii) CFIUS applications and review negotiations; (iii) statutory regulatory approvals; (iv) real estate transactions; and (v) administrative services agreements, business associate agreements, confidentiality agreements and many other contractual arrangements. A portion of Eric’s practice involves advising international clients in accessing the U.S. capital markets, cross-border mergers and acquisitions, investment transactions, and U.S. securities law compliance (’33 Act, ’34 Act and ’40 Act). Clients include issuers (companies), underwriters, investment banks, and placement agents. Eric’s peers have consistently recognized him as one of the top attorneys in the United States. He has been named Corporate “Lawyer of the Year” by The Best Lawyers in America three separate times (2016, 2019 and 2022) which is awarded annually to only one (1) lawyer per practice area per region, representing the top 0.4% of practicing attorneys in the US. He has been recognized numerous times as a Northern California Super Lawyer, in San Francisco Magazine and Sacramento Magazine, and named one of San Francisco’s Top Attorneys by the San Francisco Chronicle. He is rated AV Preeminent® by Martindale Hubbell, the highest peer review rating available.