Rod J. Howard

Mr. Howard is a Senior Advisor to Acceleron Law Group, LLP, and the founding partner of CapKey Advisors. Mr. Howard is a leading adviser on mergers and acquisitions in the technology and life science sectors, with more than 25 years’ of experience. He has handled hundreds of M&A engagements, involving over $75 billion in completed M&A transactions. He has advised buyers and sellers, boards and management teams in transactions of all sizes. In addition to his work in mergers and acquisitions, he has also advised clients on sensitive corporate governance and SEC disclosure matters. Mr. Howard has worked with large public companies and global investment banks as well as smaller public companies, venture capital investors, private companies, financial advisors and investors.

His work has spanned a variety of sectors, including wireless broadband, semiconductors, software, telecom equipment, data networking, new media, social games, life sciences and energy. Before becoming a corporate lawyer, Mr. Howard was a securities and M&A litigator.

Mr. Howard has published numerous articles on M&A topics, is a frequent speaker on mergers and acquisitions, and has chaired advanced courses of study for practitioners on mergers and acquisitions. Mr. Howard has been honored as a leading M&A lawyer in the Chambers Global Guide to the World’s Leading Lawyers, and is a perennial Northern California “Super Lawyer” in M&A. He graduated with honors from the University of Chicago Law School, was a law clerk to the Chief Judge of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Judicial Circuit, and was a visiting scholar at the elite Max Planck Institute for Foreign and International Private Law in Hamburg, Germany. Mr. Howard is a recovering veteran of “big law”, and was a partner in the Silicon Valley offices of leading national and international law firms Wilmer Cutler Pickering Hale and Dorr (where he was a founding partner of the firm’s Silicon Valley office in 2005 and leader of the firm’s West Coast M&A practice), Weil Gotshal & Manges, Brobeck Phleger & Harrison (where he chaired the firm’s M&A Group), and Gray Cary Ware & Freidenrich. Before moving to Silicon Valley in 1996, he practiced law in New York City for a dozen years, beginning his career at leading M&A boutique Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz.