Kristen Smith Dayley is a founding member of the firm and an experienced transactional attorney with broad outside and in-house counsel perspective. Kristen’s practice has focused on complex transactions, including mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, venture capital, outsourcing and general corporate contracting. Kristen is a skilled business negotiator with a pragmatic, flexible negotiation style that is focused on defining and achieving business objectives. Kristen enjoys applying her legal training to help clients formulate business solutions and address complex strategic objectives. As both an outside advisor and a corporate officer, she has a strong track record of leading business teams through the implementation and realization of new initiatives.
Before forming Prism Law Group, Kristen served as Vice President and Associate General Counsel at Safeco Corporation, a Fortune 500 property and casualty insurer. During her four years at Safeco, Kristen played a key role and developing and implanting Safeco’s IT and business process outsourcing strategy, redesigned and standardized Safeco’s contracting strategy, and advised on corporate securities, corporate governance and public company matters.
Prior to Safeco, Kristen was a senior associate at Sullivan & Cromwell LLP, in Los Angeles, California, where she counseled multinational corporations in corporate finance, M&A, project finance, venture capital and private equity matters. Following law school, she clerked for the Honorable Charles Fried on the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court. Kristen is a member of the Washington State Bar Association, the State Bar of California and the District of Columbia Bar.
Representative transactions for Kristen include:
•Negotiating sale of Safeco Corporation to Liberty Mutual Group in all-cash deal worth $6.2 billion; leading legal integration efforts and advising on antitrust issues, inter-company communications and transition planning.
•Complex outsourcing agreements, service level agreements and governance structures with outsourcing providers including Accenture, IBM, ACS, Infosys, TCS, Wipro, WNS, R.R. Donnelly, Convergys and Regulus.
•Development of standardized contracting strategy for public company, including contract templates, contract approval process and training program, which greatly reduced corporate risk and increased company’s ability to negotiate and enter into complex vendor relationships.
•Various M&A transactions including Nokia’s acquisition of Amber Networks, Amgen’s acquisition of Immunex, multiple acquisitions and dispositions by Zions Bancorporation, and the disposition by Broken Hill Proprietary Co. Ltd. of Australia of various U.S. assets.
•Representation of Softbank, Oaktree Capital, SPO Partners and Ares Management in connection with their investments in private and public companies, focusing on security terms, corporate governance and shareholder rights..
•Joint venture agreements for eBay, Technicolor, Qualcomm and 360Networks.
•Initial public offerings and follow-on offerings for PeoplePC, Exelixis, Commercial Capital Bancorp, Universal Access, StanCorp Financial Group, Amalyn Pharmaceuticals, Digital Island and Critical Path.
