Barbara L. Becker is a corporate partner in the New York office of Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher and Co-Chair of Gibson Dunn’s Mergers and Acquisitions Practice Group.  Ms. Becker is a member of the firm-wide Executive Committee, is the New York Hiring Partner and Chair of the firm-wide Diversity Committee.

Ms. Becker advises companies on all significant business and legal issues, including mergers and acquisitions (including domestic and cross-border), spin-offs, joint ventures and general corporate matters.  Ms. Becker also advises boards of directors and special committees of public companies.  Ms. Becker represents corporations and investment banks based in and outside of the United States.  She also represents hedge funds and other investors in their M&A activities.  Ms. Becker focuses on clients in the consumer/retail, technology, healthcare and industrial industries.

Highly regarded as one of the elite M&A lawyers in New York, Ms. Becker was named one of IFLR1000’s Women Leaders for 2018, an elite selection of lawyers considered the best transactional specialists in their markets and practice areas.  Ms. Becker was also the winner in the “Mergers & Acquisitions” category at International Financial Law Review’s 2017 Americas Women in Business Law Awards, one of Lawdragon’s 2017 “500 Leading Lawyers in America,” Legal Media Group’s Expert Guides 2017 Guide to the World’s Leading Women in Business Law, New York Law Journal’s 2016 “Top Women in Law,” to The National Law Journal’s 2015 list of “Outstanding Women Lawyers” and to Law360’s 2011 list of “Top Female Deal Makers,” which features the 10 leading female attorneys in the field of mergers and acquisitions.  She is ranked as a top M&A lawyer by Chambers Global: The World’s Leading Lawyers for Business and Chambers USA: America’s Leading Lawyers for Business.  Chambers USA describes Ms. Becker as an “extraordinarily smart, hardworking and exceedingly practical attorney who has an incredibly good business sense.”  In addition, she has been ranked in Best Lawyers in America and International Financial Law Review.  For Ms. Becker’s representation of Kraft Foods, Inc. in its $19 billion acquisition of Cadbury, she was named The AmLaw Daily’s “Dealmaker of the Week” in January 2010.  In 1996, Ms. Becker was named by Crain’s New York Business as one of its “Forty under Forty:  New York’s New Generation of Leaders.”  She is a former member of the Coro Foundation’s Leadership New York.

Ms. Becker’s corporate clients include Accenture, Merck, PepsiCo and VMware, among others.

Ms. Becker’s investment bank clients include Centerview, Evercore, Guggenheim Securities, Lazard Frères and UBS, among others.

Ms. Becker earned her Juris Doctor in 1988 from New York University School of Law.  She received her undergraduate degree in 1985 from Wesleyan University, where she was elected to Phi Beta Kappa.  Ms. Becker is a member of the Board of Trustees of New York University School of Law.