Simpson Thacher & Bartlett has taken a lead advisory role alongside Silicon Valley firm Gunderson Dettmer Stough Villeneuve Franklin & Hachigian on Yahoo!’s acquisition of blogging site Tumblr for $1.1bn in cash. Simpson Thacher’s team for Yahoo! was led by New York corporate partner Gary Horowitz alongside a Palo Alto group including corporate partner Kirsten Jensen tax partner Katharine Moir and employee benefits partner Tristan Brown.Gunderson advised Tumblr, putting forward New York corporate partners Ward Breeze, Steve Baglio and Daniel Goldberg.Yahoo! announced the deal yesterday (20 May), vowing at the same time “not to screw it up”. It said it had paid approximately $1.1bn, substantially all in cash.Background to this deal:Simpson Thacher is a longstanding adviser to Yahoo!, but in 2008 represented Microsoft in its hostile bid to take over the online group before stepping down due to a conflict (21 February 2008).Gunderson has advised Tumblr since its founding in 2007. It has a broad set of relationships with US technology startups, advising on recent sales for OMGPOP (5 April 2012) and Virtuata (25 July 2012).

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