Spotlight on Nicholas Ferrer: celebrating the creation of Ashurst Perkins Coie

Nick:

First – very honored to be featured here, and I’ll try hard not to gloat too much about the recent USA win over the Socceroos.

The short version of my background is that I’m originally an East Coaster who found his way to Seattle about 14 years ago. At the time, I was a mid-level associate a large firm in New York, and Seattle was intriguing for a variety of reasons, including that Perkins Coie (who was not yet in New York City) had really smart lawyers doing interesting work. Moving here turned out to be a fantastic decision on both the professional and personal fronts.

My M&A practice is fairly representative of our core M&A strengths in the US. These days the largest component for me is private equity – which primarily consists of representing US based sponsors and their portfolio companies in platform acquisitions, add-ons and exits, as well as general corporate support at the portfolio company level. But two other significant components are advising publicly traded or large private companies – especially but not exclusively in the tech sector – in their M&A activity, and advising founder or venture-backed companies pursuing major liquidity events. That variety of work and client base is something I cherish.

While I'm fortunate to work with clients across many industries, I most frequently find myself advising companies in the tech, consumer, and business services sectors. Recently I’ve also been doing quite a bit in aerospace & defense as that market has been especially hot. Geographically, while many deals have some sort of nexus to the Pacific Northwest, my practice – like that of my US-based M&A peers – is national and clients are spread throughout the country and, to a lesser extent (historically, at least) the globe. I’m personally quite excited to see an uptick in cross-border work due to our combination. Cross-border work has always been part of our practice in the US, but until recently we’ve been limited in what we can directly support when it comes to assisting our clients with issues beyond the borders.

Nick:

There are so many. At the risk of sounding cliché, the business world is global, and that’s never been truer. Even companies that may seem on the surface to be entirely domestic almost invariably have some international component to their business model – for example, customers, employees, or IP. And with international operations come a web of laws and legal complexities to navigate. The combination allows us to support clients in ways that they require but which we haven’t historically been able to deliver.

Sometimes you don’t realize what you were missing until you have it. Perkins Coie never had global coverage, but our clients frequently faced international issues that required us to partner with other law firms in the local jurisdiction. Overall, the level of cross-border collaboration is already beyond what I expected.

Nick:

It’s a somewhat odd and constantly evolving market in the US right now. Interest in deals is high, but the volume of deals closing is relatively low compared to recent years. Deals are taking longer to complete and are frequently breaking before they get to signing. There’s probably a lot behind that for smarter people than me to dissect, but it does seem like AI is having a big impact. On the one hand, it’s creating opportunities – our buyside tech clients are actively pursuing targets with complementary (often nascent) AI capabilities and some venture backed companies in the space are seeing some incredibly attractive exit valuations. But on the other hand, it’s driving uncertainty – every buyer, regardless of industry, is taking time to analyze whether a business is “AI proof” or “AI ready” and understand how AI might impact the industry and the target business model. This is particularly the case with the software industry (which in the US has driven a lot of VC, M&A and IPO activity over the past several years), where valuations are under considerable pressure due to fears of competing AI agent capabilities.

There are some bright spots. Deals in industries such as aerospace/defense, data centers and related services are closing with the usual velocity, and while the volume of transactions closing may be down, we have seen mega-deals return. There is also no shortage of private capital. All our sponsor clients are working incredibly hard to find ways to deploy that capital, but they remain understandably selective and focused on identifying high quality assets where things can, unsurprisingly, get very competitive. We are also seeing financial sponsors holding portfolio companies for longer periods than they may have in the past, and many are considering or have already put in place continuation vehicles.

Many people will also point to macro-economic headwinds – including geopolitics and tariffs, especially – as negatively impacting US dealmaking. But most US dealmakers I speak to now seem relatively comfortable with those risks, or at least convinced that the US economy is sufficiently resilient to weather what may come.

Nick:

Yes! It’s been awesome. The energy in the city is palpable and because the stadium is downtown, we have seen scores of fans in their home country jerseys walking by the office each day (including more than 8,000 Australia fans the other week). I was able to go to the USA/Australia game and I can honestly say it was the best experience I’ve ever had at a live sporting event – the noise was deafening in the best possible way. Credit to the Socceroos for a hard-fought match and to their fans for a strong showing.