Yvan-Claude Pierre

Yvan-Claude is a partner in the business department and a member of the capital markets and public companies practice groups. He is also a founding member of Cooley’s Chicago office, where he spends half his time. Yvan-Claude advises clients on a wide range of public offerings, M&A and other significant corporate transactions across the US and throughout Europe, Australia and Asia. Over his 25 years in practice, he has counseled US and global publicly traded and privately held life sciences, healthcare, medical technology, consumer healthcare, technology and other innovative companies, as well as investment banking firms, private equity sponsors and venture capital firms.

Yvan-Claude is recognized as a leading public offerings counselor. His securities and corporate finance practice includes extensive experience with IPOs, follow-on offerings, SPACs, spin-offs, PIPEs, 144A equity and debt, private placements and other securities transactions and compliance matters. He has been involved in 300+ capital markets offerings and 200+ public and private M&A transactions.

Yvan-Claude’s select recent representative transactions include advising:

Capital Markets

• Outlook Therapeutics in its multiple equity offerings
• Etsy multiple convertible note offerings
• Shake Shack on its $140 million follow-on offering and $250 million convertible notes offering
• Innate Pharma in its $79 million IPO
• Geron Corporation in its $150 million follow-on offering
• The underwriters in Precision Biosciences’ $145 million IPO

M&A

• 4C Insights in its undisclosed sale to MediaOcean
• Conductor in its $150 million acquisition of ContentKing
• Tenable Holdings in its:
  • $78 million acquisition of Indegy
  • $44.5 million acquisition of Bit Discovery
• iCIMS in its:
  • Undisclosed acquisition of TextRecruit
  • Investment from Vista Equity Partners

Private Financing

• Protégé in its $8.5 million Seed series financing
• DigniFi in its $14 million Series A financing  
• Ureeka in its $8.6 million Series A financing

Yvan-Claude is a frequent public speaker on matters relating to public offerings, SPACs, M&A, venture capital transactions and other topics relevant to private and public companies. He is often quoted by news sources and industry journals as a leading authority on IPOs, including The American Lawyer, Law360, Reuters, Investor's Business Daily, BBC News, BusinessDesk, The Deal, Financial Times, Directorship, Social Cloudcast, Zimbio, Technology Spectator and Business Spectator.

Yvan-Claude was most recently named as a Midwest Trailblazer by The American Lawyer. He has also been recommended by The Legal 500 for Capital Markets Equity Offerings, both for advice to Issuers and Managers, in 2013, 2014 and 2015; as well as M&A middle-market and technology transactions in 2015. Earlier in his career, The Network Journal named Yvan-Claude to its 40 Under Forty list of rising African-American stars in the US.

Before entering law school, Yvan-Claude worked in the financial investments groups at TIAA-CREF and Morgan Stanley and as an accountant on the financial audit staff of Ernst & Young. While attending law school, he worked in the private client group at Merrill Lynch.

Prior to joining Cooley, Yvan-Claude served as the global head of the corporate and securities department and chair of the US capital markets group at a global US law firm.