Michael Glaser and Mike LaPlante join Morrison & Foerster

Michael Glaser and Mike LaPlante join Morrison & Foerster

The ongoing global mergers and acquisitions boom has fuelled a series of office openings in the Bay Area

In a significant move that boosts its emerging companies and venture capital (ECVC) capabilities in the Bay Area, Morrison & Foerster (MoFo) has added a pair of partners from its West Coast rival Perkins Coie.

Michael Glaser and Mike LaPlante have joined the firm's corporate department in San Francisco. While Glaser served as co-chair of Coie's ECVC practice, the two bring with them more than three decades of combined experience working with emerging companies in California.

MoFo said the hires underscore its commitment to building its global ECVC offering. They also serve to beef up the Bay Area team amid the increasing demand from startups, emerging growth companies and venture capital firms working in the tech and life sciences industries.

Eric McCrath, the co-chair of MoFo's global corporate department, said Glaser and LaPlante's practices "offer great synergies" with the firm's core strengths, including venture capital financings, mergers and acquisitions, technology transactions and privacy.

"Their presence further expands and augments our already exceptional capabilities in these areas, which continue to be highly sought-after by our clients around the globe when venture capital's dry powder is at an all-time high," he added.

Glaser stated, "Morrison & Foerster is a global technology leader with tremendous ECVC, technology transactions, and corporate capabilities, which are highly complementary to my practice and clients' focus. I am excited to join a firm with such a strong ECVC footprint in Silicon Valley and globally."

Glaser had spent more than two decades at Perkins Coie, having joined from Wilson Sonsini in 1999. He specializes in handling venture capital transactions on behalf of clients in consumer products, e-commerce, interactive entertainment, digital media, cloud services and artificial intelligence spaces.

He served in a number of leadership roles during his time at Perkins Coie, including two terms on the firm's executive committee and as firm-wide co-chair of its corporate practice.

Meanwhile, LaPlante said, "MoFo has all of the resources that our innovative tech startups need to pursue perishable market opportunities in a complex and competitive business environment."

He had joined Perkins Coie in 2014 from Paul Hastings. He focuses his practice on providing legal advice to entrepreneurs and startups at all stages of the company life cycle across a number of sectors. These include artificial intelligence, enterprise software, digital media, virtual healthcare and social media.

The firm said LaPlante has also led 'countless' startup financings with an aggregate deal value in the tens of billions of dollars.