Steven J. Williams is a member of the Paul, Weiss Mergers and Acquisitions Group. Williams has extensive experience with public company transactions including spin-outs, carve-outs, leveraged buy-outs, mergers-of-equals, board representations and special committee representations, as well as with private equity and venture capital transactions, auctions, joint ventures and restructuring transactions. He is active in contested matters, representing targets in proxy fights, consent solicitations, tender offers and other unsolicited transactions. In addition, Steven has broad expertise in acquisitions and sales of asset management and other financial services firms.
Lawdragon Honors
| Honor | Year | Practice |
|---|---|---|
| The 2027 Lawdragon 500 Leading Dealmakers | 2027 | Corporate, esp. M&A |
| The 2026 Lawdragon 500 Leading Dealmakers in America | 2026 | Corporate, esp. M&A |
| The 2025 Lawdragon 500 Leading Dealmakers in America | 2025 | Corporate, esp. M&A |
| The 2024 Lawdragon 500 Leading Dealmakers in America | 2024 | Corporate, esp. M&A |
| The 2022 Lawdragon 500 Leading Dealmakers in America | 2022 | Corporate, esp. M&A |
| Lawdragon 500 Leading Dealmakers in America | 2021 | Corporate, esp. M&A |
Williams’s recent transactions include representing:
- ADP in its successful proxy contest against Pershing Square
- Barnes & Noble in its sale to an affiliate of Elliott Management
- Bellisio Foods in its $1.075 billion sale to Charoen Pokphand Foods
- Chambers Street Properties as counsel to the board of trustees and in its merger of equals with Gramercy Property Trust for an enterprise value of $5.7 billion
- Chevron in its proposed $50 billion acquisition of Anadarko Petroleum
- Citigroup in the sale of Nikko Asset Management to Sumitomo Trust
- The special committee of the Expedia Group board of directors in its acquisition of Liberty Expedia Holdings
- General Electric in the spin-offs of GE HealthCare and GE Vernova and the launch of GE Aerospace; the $21.4 billion sale of its BioPharma business to Danaher; the more than $30 billion combination of its jet leasing unit, GE Capital Aviation Services (GECAS), with AerCap Holdings; and GE Capital in the sale of PK AirFinance to Apollo Global Management and Athene Holding
- General Motors Co. in its $3.45 billion acquisition of SoftBank Vision Fund’s equity ownership stake and assumption of Softbank’s investment obligation in the autonomous vehicle joint venture Cruise and its acquisition of the remaining ownership stake of Cruise
- Honeywell International in the spin-off of its Transportation Systems business to form Garrett Motion
- IBM in its $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat; the spin-off of Kyndryl Holdings, Inc., its managed infrastructure services business, into a separate publicly traded company; its acquisition of Confluent for an enterprise value of $11 billion; its $6.4 billion acquisition of HashiCorp; its $4.6 billion acquisition of Apptio; its strategic partnership with Palo Alto Networks; its separate acquisitions of DataStax, Dialexa, Envizi, Instana Neudesic and NS1; and the sale of The Weather Company to Francisco Partners
- Janus Capital Group in its strategic alliance with Dai-ichi Life
- Mastercard in its acquisition of Orbiscom
- Spectrum Brands in its $1.4 billion acquisition of Armored AutoGroup and its acquisition of Procter & Gamble’s European Pet Food business
- XPO Logistics in the separation of its tech-enabled brokered transportation services from its less-than-truckload (LTL) business in North America to create two separate publicly traded companies