Sarah Payne

Recognized by The Times as Lawyer of the Week in 2014 for her role advising the underwriters in Alibaba’s initial public offering. Sarah Payne is a partner resident in Sullivan & Cromwell’s Silicon Valley office and is co-head of the Firm’s Capital Markets Group and the Technology M&A and Finance Group.

Sarah has a broad-based corporate practice advising clients on a wide range of transactions, focusing on public and private company mergers and acquisitions and public and private securities offerings. She is also active in the Firm’s corporate governance practice and advises clients on their continuing reporting obligations, Sarbanes-Oxley processes and other general corporate matters. Sarah has been named to the Daily Journal’s list of the Top 100 Women Lawyers in California and Top 100 Lawyers in California and recognized as a Rising Star in M&A by ILFR1000 and a Rising Star: Finance by Euromoney.]

Sarah’s recent representative transactions include Alibaba Group Holding Limited’s $25 billion IPO and NYSE listing, as counsel to the underwriters, Levi Strauss & Co.’s $717 million IPO and NYSE listing, as counsel to the underwriters, Joe Tsai, executive vice chairman and co-founder of Alibaba Group, in his purchase of a 49% interest in the Brooklyn Nets from owner Mikhail Prokhorov, Insight Enterprises, Inc. in its acquisition of Datalink Corporation, SoftBank Group in a series of capital raising transactions which involved monetizing a portion of its shares of Alibaba Group Holding Limited for a total transaction size of $10 billion, Ruckus Wireless in its $1.5 billion acquisition by Brocade and Teva Pharmaceutical Industries in its $40.5 billion acquisition of Allergan’s Generics Business.

Sarah is a frequent speaker and author, and a Lecturer in Law at Stanford Law School (2019), where she teaches a course on International Securities Regulation. She received her bachelor’s degree from Yale University and her Juris Doctor from UC Berkeley School of Law.