John Christiansen

John is a Partner in San Francisco and Co-Head of the firm's West Coast offices. He advises clients on complex M&A, restructurings, IPOs, activist defense and crisis situations , as well as ongoing media relations and investor relations programs.

Recent engagements include advising Autodesk on its defense against Starboard; Synosys on its $35 billion acquisition of Ansys; HPE on its $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks; Adobe on its $20 billion acquisition of Figma; Zendesk on a contested acquisition, activist defense and going private; Arm on its $4.9 billion IPO; Dexcom on IP litigation against Abbott; Slack on its direct listing and $28 billion sale to Salesforce; UC San Diego Health of regional hospital acquisitions; Qualcomm on its defense against Broadcom; Digital Realty on its $8 billion acquisition of Interxion; Avaya on its Chapter 11 restructuring; Uber on its $8 billion IPO; Hewlett-Packard on its separation and HPE on subsequent transactions; and Intel on its $17 billion Altera and $15 billion Mobileye acquisitions.

Prior to joining FGS Global in 2009, John was head of West Coast Equity Capital Markets for Cowen, responsible for the origination and execution of over $26 billion of offerings in technology, consumer and health care.

Previously, John spent over 10 years with Morgan Stanley, primarily in the Silicon Valley Technology Investment Banking Group. He also helped establish the team that works with companies on their investor marketing activities.

John holds a B.A. magna cum laude with high honors from Dartmouth College and a Master of Public Policy degree from Harvard University.