Samuel C. Thompson Jr. joined Penn State’s Dickinson School of Law in July 2007 as a professor of law and the founder and director of Penn State’s Center for the Study of Mergers and Acquisitions. The Center examines corporate, securities, tax, antitrust, and other legal and economic issues that arise in mergers and acquisitions and hosts continuing legal education programs addressing these issues.

Professor Thompson, who previously was a professor of law at the University of California Los Angeles School of Law and director of the UCLA Law Center for the Study of Mergers and Acquisitions, is a highly regarded scholar of corporate and international tax, corporate governance, and antitrust and is the author of 16 books and more than 75 articles. His teaching interests focus on the corporate, securities, tax, and antitrust aspects of mergers and acquisitions as well as international tax, investment banking, taxation of business entities, and economic growth policy.

Throughout his distinguished career, Professor Thompson has held a number of notable positions, such as head of the tax department of Schiff Hardin & Waite in Chicago; tax policy advisor, on behalf of the U.S. Treasury Tax Assistance Office, to the South African Ministry of Finance in Pretoria, South Africa; Attorney Fellow in the Securities and Exchange Commission’s Merger and Acquisitions Office; consultant on merger and acquisition issues to the Federal Trade Commission; and professor in residence at the European Commission’s Antitrust Merger Taskforce in Brussels. On several occasions he has testified about tax policy before the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Ways and Means and the House Judiciary Committee. He formerly served as dean of the University of Miami School of Law and has been a professor and distinguished visiting professor at the University of Virginia School of Law and the Jacquin D. Bierman Visiting Professor of Taxation at Yale Law School.

As a law student, Professor Thompson worked on a university-sponsored civil rights project near Leland, Mississippi, before beginning service as an officer in the United States Marine Corps, where he rose to captain and received the Navy Commendation Medal for service in Vietnam. He played varsity football at his undergraduate school, West Chester University.

Keith A. Flaum is a partner in the Cooley Godward Kronish Business Department and a senior member of the firm’s Mergers & Acquisitions Group. He is resident in the firm’s Palo Alto office and has been with the firm since 1995.

Mr. Flaum practices primarily in the mergers & acquisitions area, where he represents both public and private companies in the information technology and life sciences industries, and in a broad range of other industries. He has extensive experience in handling a wide variety of U.S. and cross-border acquisition transactions, regularly handling transactions throughout Europe, Asia and the rest of the world.

Mr. Flaum is a member of the Committee on Negotiated Acquisitions (affiliated with the American Bar Association’s Section of Business Law), which is comprised of M&A specialists from across the United States, Canada and more than 15 other countries. He is chair of the committee’s M&A Market Trends Subcommittee, which tracks trends in public company and private company M&A transactions. He also serves on the committee’s Task Force on Acquisitions of Public Companies. Mr. Flaum has lectured extensively on M&A-related topics.

Mr. Flaum is the author of First Annual Deal Points Study Public Targets, The M&A Lawyer, Antitrust Provisions: A Dealmakers Guide, The M&A Law Journal, and Some Observations on Drafting Material Adverse Change Provisions in Agreements for the Acquisition of a Business, American Bar Association (1999). In addition, he is the co-author of Selected Developments in California Corporations Law and Federal Securities Law, Business Law Section of the State Bar of California (1993, 1994, 1995).

Mr. Flaum received a J.D. from the University of California, Davis School of Law, in 1989. He completed his undergraduate education at the University of California, Los Angeles, where he received a bachelor’s degree in 1986. Mr. Flaum is a member of the American Bar Association, the State Bar of California and the Colorado Bar Association.