Compass Lexecon Advises on Successful NVIDIA Acquisition of Mellanox

In March 2019, NVIDIA, a manufacturer of graphical processing units (GPUs) and other computer processing components, announced plans to acquire Mellanox, which manufacturers various network interconnects, for $6.9 billion. Compass Lexecon experts Jonathan Orszag, Elizabeth Wang, Daniel O’Brien and Mary Coleman were retained by counsel for NVIDIA and Mellanox to provide economic analysis concerning the merger and to assist the companies with the review of the deal by competition authorities in the U.S., Europe, China, and Mexico. NVIDIA is a leading supplier of GPUs used in high performance computing platforms with workloads in artificial intelligence, scientific computing and data analytics, among others. Mellanox is a leading supplier of interconnects used in such platforms. Compass Lexecon provided economic analyses regarding potential bundling and foreclosure concerns raised by various competition authorities. The transaction was ultimately cleared by all authorities (with conditions in China).

The Compass Lexecon team also included Sophie Yang, Rodrigo Montes, Joel Papke, Jake Cheng and Linchun Chen. Compass Lexecon worked closely with NVIDIA’s outside counsel, Jones Day, led by Craig A. Waldman and Peter A. Julian in the U.S., Alexandre G. Verheyden and Phillipe Laconte in Europe, and Peter J. Wang and Yizhe Zhang in China; NVIDIA’s co-counsel in Europe, Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton LLP, led by Francisco Enrique Gonzalez-Diaz and Opdebeeck-Wilson; NVIDIA’s co-counsel in China, T&D Associates, led by John Yong Ren; Mellanox’s counsel, Latham & Watkins LLP, led by Joshua N. Holian and Yanyan Yang; and co-counsel in China, Sunland Law Firm, led by Yao Feng.