Bruce H. Goldfarb
Verified
Bruce H. Goldfarb is a founder of proxy solicitation firm Okapi Partners and serves as its President and Chief Executive Officer. Bruce works extensively with corporate and mutual fund clients, as well as third party investor and shareholder groups, including private equity sponsors, hedge funds and arbitrage firms, in solicitation and information agent campaigns. He focuses on proxy solicitation strategy and execution for mergers and acquisitions, proxy fights and other extraordinary transactions. Bruce has been involved in some of the most significant proxy solicitation campaigns of the last decade. He has acted for parties in numerous contested acquisition transactions and proxy fights. In contested M&A situations, Bruce represented clients including: Green Mountain Coffee Roasters in its acquisition of Diedrich Coffee; TPG Capital in its acquisition of J. Crew Group; KPN in its acquisition of iBasis; Answers Corporation in its acquisition by AFCV Holdings, a portfolio company of Summit Partners; Hewlett-Packard in the proxy fight with Walter Hewlett and the successful solicitation of the merger with Compaq; a consortium of private equity firms in the acquisition of VNU (now The Nielsen Company) that had opposition from hedge fund Knight Vinke and other investors; PeopleSoft in the acquisition of J.D. Edwards and its initial defense from the hostile bid by Oracle; Wachovia Corporation in its merger with First Union while defending it from a hostile bid by SunTrust; and TRW in its successful initial defense from a hostile bid by Northrop Grumman. Recent clients in contested election campaigns include Dennyâs Corporation, Starboard Value, the Clinton Group, Kistefos AS, JANA Partners, Seneca Capital and Casablanca Capital. Prior to establishing Okapi Partners, Bruce was the Senior Managing Director and General Counsel of Georgeson Inc. (now a subsidiary of Computershare Limited), where he headed the Global M&A Advisory Group. Before entering the proxy solicitation business, Bruce was a Senior Vice President of the investment management firm, Scudder, Stevens & Clark, which is now a part of Deutsche Asset Management. At Scudder, he was a member of the legal department and served as Chairman of the Firmâs Proxy Review Committee. Bruce practiced corporate law at Cravath, Swaine & Moore for more than six years, where he specialized in mergers and acquisitions, securities transactions and international matters. Bruce earned a J.D. from the Columbia University School of Law. He also received a B.A. in the History of Art from the University of Pennsylvania concurrently with a B.S. Econ., concentration in Finance, from its Wharton School.