Paul Hastings Adds Leading Technology and Commercial Transactions Partner in San Diego

February 25, 2014

San Diego, CA- Paul Hastings LLP, a leading global law firm, announced today that Beni Surpin has joined the firm as a partner in the San Diego office, where he will help lead the firm’s Technology and Commercial Transactions practice. Mr. Surpin was previously a partner at DLA Piper, where he was part of the Technology, Sourcing, and Commercial group.

“Beni’s extensive domestic and cross-border technology and commercial transaction experience will be an asset to us as we continue to build our global technology-focused commercial transactional practice,” said Carl Sanchez, chair of the Global Mergers & Acquisitions practice and chair of the San Diego office. “His addition will allow us to work with clients on increasingly complex domestic and international deals at the intersection of multiple technology-focused sectors, such as mobile and wireless technology, data management and strategy, healthcare delivery, drug discovery and medical devices, high-tech and alternative energy,” he added.

“The combination of Beni’s breadth of experience across different areas, combined with his international background, are a great complement to our existing practices and national and global capabilities, and will further advance our strategy of assisting our clients with a range of legal and business challenges based on sector-specific expertise,” said Elizabeth Noe, chair of the Corporate practice at Paul Hastings. “We have made significant in-roads in building our expertise across practices in several industries, including technology, life sciences, healthcare, telecommunications and media, and energy, and as a result, clients are increasingly trusting us with complicated cross-border and cross-practice legal challenges,” she added.

“I have been impressed for some time with Paul Hastings’ growing track record of working with clients on innovative deals and was drawn to the exciting opportunity of helping lead the group to the next level,” said Beni Surpin. “It’s a propitious time for my area of practice, and combined with Paul Hastings’ global network and range of practice expertise, it opens up a lot of great possibilities,” he added. Mr. Surpin focuses his practice on counseling international and domestic companies on legal and business issues relating to technology and commercial transactions, covering a broad spectrum of deals and structures from licenses, manufacturing, supply, distribution, services, clinical, collaboration, and research and development, to technology acquisitions, formation of joint ventures, and creation of strategic partnerships and alliances. He works closely with his clients in creating and setting strategic direction and then structuring and negotiating arrangements to implement these goals.

Some of Mr. Surpin's representative clients have included Amgen, Aviation Corporation of China (AVIC), Beckman Coulter, Blue Cross Blue Shield, Broadcom, Clean Energy Fuels, Genomics Institute of the Novartis Research Foundation, Huawei, International Lease Finance Corporation (ILFC), Jenny Craig, Life Technologies, Lufthansa, Northrop Grumman Corporation, O.N.E. Natural Experience, Organovo, Real Asset Energy Fund (RAEF), Reef, SAIC, SecurityPoint Media, Sorteo Games, Springs Global, and Taylor Made Golf.

Most recently, Paul Hastings’ Technology and Commercial Transactions group has helped clients such as Samsung and Facebook stay at the forefront of the technology industry, advising Samsung on the sale to Seagate of Samsung’s hard disk business for $1.375 billion and helping Facebook save $1.2 billion over the past three years on its project to open source its server and data center designs.

Paul Hastings LLP is a leading global law firm with offices in Asia, Europe, and the United States. We provide innovative legal solutions to financial institutions and Fortune 500 companies. Please visit www.paulhastings.com for more information.