Johanna Mayer

Johanna Mayer is a Partner in Simpson Thacher’s Mergers and Acquisitions Practice. She regularly provides counsel to private equity sponsors, financial institutions and public and private mergers and divestitures, strategic investments, joint ventures, recapitalizations and other corporate transactions across a wide range of industries, including media and technology, healthcare, consumer products and services, sports and financial services. Her clients have included KKR, New Mountain, Garda World Security, Ingersoll Rand, Sirius XM, RAJ Capital and People’s United Financial, among others.

Johanna’s recent representations include:

• KKR in multiple transactions, including its: majority investment in Alchemer, the first investment for KKR Ascendant, a new strategy within KKR’s Americas Private Equity platform; $1.4 billion acquisition of PharMerica; acquisition of Ensono from Charlesbank Capital Partners and M/C Partners; strategic investment in Knowlton Development Corporation (“kdc/one”); investment in Coty Inc.; among others
• Synovus Financial Corp. (NYSE: SNV) in its acquisition of FCB Financial Holdings, Inc. (NYSE: FCB), owner of Florida Community Bank (FCB), Florida’s largest community bank, for $2.9 billion
• Wella Company in its acquisition of Briogeo, one of the fastest growing hair care brands in the world and one of the largest independent Black-owned brands in the United States
• New Mountain Capital in its acquisition of PerkinElmer’s Applied, Food and Enterprise Services businesses for $2.45 billion and its acquisition of ILC Dover and Flexan
• Avantor in its $6.4 billion acquisition of VWR
• Funds advised by Apax Partners in their acquisition of Syneron Candela
• Snow Phipps in its acquisition of Winchester Electronics Corporation
• Blue Buffalo in its $8 billion sale to General Mills
• Corsair in the acquisition of a controlling stake in Jackson Hewitt Tax Service
• American Electric Power in its sale of four competitive power plants to a Blackstone and ArcLight Capital Partners joint venture
• Blackstone and AVINTIV Inc. in connection with Blackstone’s $2.45 billion sale of AVINTIV to Berry Plastics Group
• Ingersoll Rand Inc. in the sale of its Specialty Vehicle Technologies Segment to Platinum Equity for $1.68 billion
• SiriusXM in its $3.5 billion acquisition of Pandora, and in its separation transaction with Liberty Media Corporation pursuant to which “new” SiriusXM became an independent and more widely held public company with the shares of SiriusXM previously held by Liberty Media being “split-off” to holders of Liberty Media’s SiriusXM tracking stock
• People's United Financial in its acquisition of BSB Bancorp, Inc. for approximately $327 million; acquisition of First Connecticut Bancorp for approximately $544 million; and acquisition of United Financial Bancorp for approximately $759 million

Johanna received her J.D. from Columbia Law School, where she was a Harlan Fiske Stone Scholar. She received her A.B., cum laude, from Princeton University.