Women and M&A

UC Irvine Law Review Volume 12 Issue 2 Article 17 2-2022 Women and M&A Afra Afsharipour Follow this and additional works at: https://scholarship.law.uci.edu/ucilr Part of the Business Organizations Law Commons, and the Law and Gender Commons Recommended Citation Afra Afsharipour, Women and M&A, 12 U.C. IRVINE L. REV. 359 (2022). Available at: https://scholarship.law.uci.edu/ucilr/vol12/iss2/17 This Article is brought to you for free and open access by UCI Law Scholarly Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in UC Irvine Law Review by an authorized editor of UCI Law Scholarly Commons. Clean Final Edit_Afsharipour_v2 (ET editrs).docx (Do Not Delete) 1/31/2022 10:48 AM Women and M&A Afra Afsharipour* Corporations, law firms, and investment banks all state that diversity matters. This Article shows that there is a chasm between discourse and action. For the most important decisions undertaken by companies—large merger and acquisition (M&A) transactions—a gender gap persists. This Article provides a holistic examination of the network of lead actors involved in M&A, revealing that women’s leadership opportunities continue to be vastly unequal. Using hand-collected data from 700 transactions, this Article reveals that thirty years after women began to account for almost half of all law students, gender parity in M&A leadership lags far behind. To illustrate, over a seven-year period, women make up on average 10.5% of lead legal advisors for buyers in large M&A deals. Moreover, this Article documents the lack of transparency on leadership data for other players in M&A. This Article argues that understanding, documenting, and disclosing the gender gap in M&A leadership is critical for increasing accountability and for determining the solutions that may work to reduce such disparities. *Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs and Professor of Law, University of California, Davis, School of Law. For helpful comments, suggestions, and conversations, many thanks to Iman Anabtawi, Naomi Cahn, June Carbone, Meera Deo, Jennifer Fan, Christa Fancher, Jill Fisch, Jeff Gordon, Mitu Gulati, Joan Heminway, Tracy Richelle High, Claire Hill, Cathy Hwang, Matt Jennejohn, Kevin Johnson, Kristin Johnson, Thomas Joo, David Katz, Summer Kim, Katrina Lee, Nancy Levit, Tom Lin, Ann Lipton, Veronica Root Martinez, Therese Maynard, Amelia Miazad, Jennifer Muller, Menesh Patel, Darren Rosenblum, Jane Ross, Patricia Seith, Megan Shaner, James Spindler, Diego Valderrama, and Chuck Whitehead. I also thank participants at workshops at the University of Virginia Law School, Cornell Law School, University of Texas (Austin) Law School, Colorado Law School, and at the AALS Section on Transactional Law and Skills Meeting, the Feminism and Corporate Governance Roundtable, the National Business Law Scholars Conference, the Tulane Law Corporate and Securities Conference, and the Comparative Takeovers Workshop at UC Davis for their helpful comments. I am grateful to UC Davis School of Law, particularly Dean Kevin Johnson, for providing generous institutional support for this project and to the library staff at UC Davis School of Law for their assistance. John Clancy, Evelynn Chun, Priyam Desai, and Lauren Kim provided excellent research assistance, and Samantha Driks provided outstanding assistance with the data collection for this project. I am grateful for the excellent editing of the UC Irvine Law Review. 359 Clean Final Edit_Afsharipour_v2 (ET editrs).docx (Do Not Delete) 360 UC IRVINE LAW REVIEW 1/31/2022 10:48 AM [ V ol. 12:359 Introduction ..................................................................................................................... 360 I. The Dearth of Women in M&A: Boards and the C-Suite.................................... 367 A. Women as Executives in Corporate America ...................................... 367 B. Women on Boards ...................................................................................... 371 II. Women as M&A Advisors ....................................................................................... 378 A. Women as Legal Advisors ......................................................................... 378 B. Gender Diversity of Leading M&A Advisors: Empirical Findings ...................................................................................................... 381 Overall Picture .......................................................................................... 382 Law Firms .................................................................................................. 383 Unique Women as Lead Counsel ......................................................... 385 Deal Teams ................................................................................................ 386 C. Barriers to the Advancement of Women as Lead M&A Advisors ..................................................................................................... 387 1. Explicit and Implicit Biases .............................................................. 388 2. Structural Biases in the Practice of M&A ..................................... 392 3. Promotion, Credit, and Pay Disparities ......................................... 393 D. Women as M&A Financial Advisors ..................................................... 394 III. Diversity and M&A: Why Does Diversity Matter? ............................................ 397 A. The Value of Values: Equity, Inclusion, and Access.......................... 397 B. Improving the M&A Decision-Making Process .................................. 399 1. Improving Decision-Making ............................................................ 401 2. Diversity and M&A: Implications from Empirical Studies ...... 403 IV. Towards Women’s Inclusion in M&A.................................................................. 405 A. Disclosure and Transparency ................................................................... 406 B. Attacking Bias............................................................................................... 408 C. Stakeholder Pressure .................................................................................. 410 1. Stakeholder Pressure for Board Diversity ..................................... 410 2. Stakeholder Pressure for C-Suite Diversity .................................. 411 3. Advisors and Client Pressure to Diversify .................................... 413 D. Quotas and Mandates ................................................................................ 415 E. Improving the Pipeline in Professional Schools ................................. 417 Conclusion ........................................................................................................................ 418 Appendix A—Methodology .......................................................................................... 419 Appendix B—Additional Data Charts ........................... (...truncated)