Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati is advising Twitter on its initial public offering (IPO), confirmed by the micro-blogging site yesterday (12 September) in a tweet.
In the most anticipated public floatation of a tech company since Facebook, Twitter confirmed it had confidentially submitted securities documents to the SEC "for a planned IPO".
Analysts have suggested the company could be valued between $10bn and $15bn
Wilson Sonsini chairman Larry Sonsini confirmed his firm's involvement in the IPO to Reuters, though it is not yet know which other firms have taken roles on the IPO.
On corporate matters, Twitter has regularly turned to Fenwick & West, which also advised on Facebook's IPO in 2012.
Other sought-after mandates include providing counsel to lead underwriter Goldman Sachs and bookrunners, which are reported to include Bank of America Merrill Lynch.
Earlier this month Twitter appointed former Wilson Sonsini associate Vijaya Gadde as its new general counsel, after previous post-holder Alexander Macgillivray stepped down.
Gadde was a corporate senior director and associate general counsel at networking equipment company Juniper Networks before she took up a role as legal director at Twitter in 2011. She left Wilson Sonsini in 2010.
Macgillivray joined Twitter in 2009 from Google, where he was deputy general counsel of product and intellectual property.
Twitter, which was launched in 2006, has attracted much attention in the legal sphere due to a number of high-profile cases, including the long-running 'Twitter joke trial', in which the High Court last summer overturned the conviction of a man who tweeted a joke about blowing up an airport.
(Source:http://www.legalweek.com)
