HPE Hires Beth Wilkinson to Fight DOJ’s Blocking Juniper Buy (1)

Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co. retained Beth Wilkinson to serve as the company’s lead lawyer in defending its $14 billion acquisition of Juniper Networks Inc. from a challenge by the US Justice Department.

Wilkinson is one of the country’s more prominent litigators, having left the partnership at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison in 2016 to start her own boutique, now called Wilkinson Stekloff. She helped Microsoft Corp. score a 2023 trial victory securing its $69 billion buy of video game maker Activision Blizzard Inc. Visa Inc. hired Wilkinson last year to represent the credit card giant in another antitrust case filed by the Justice Department.

“Beth will be our lead litigator in court,” HPE spokesman Adam Bauer said.

Wilkinson entered her appearance Feb. 20 in the lawsuit filed against HPE and Juniper by the Justice Department, which claims the merger is anti-competitive. Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom is advising Juniper in the case and underlying transaction, while Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher are also counseling HPE. Those three firms filed an initial response Feb. 10 to the Justice Department’s case, which was filed a month ago.

Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz and Covington & Burling are serving as deal counsel to HPE, which announced its proposed purchase of Juniper in January 2024. HPE’s CEO Antonio Neri said in an interview last month with Bloomberg TV that the company will “vigorously” defend its bid for Juniper.

Wilkinson’s shop, which pays big money each year to a few chosen associates, lost two of them last month when Sarah Lee Best and Elizabeth Keys were among 64 passengers killed in a plane crash in Washington. Wilkinson Stekloff’s homepage is now a memoriam to both lawyers.

The small firm often punches above its weight, having had notable engagements last year in the sporting space by helping the NFL scuttle a $4.7 billion jury award and representing the NCAA in a $2.8 billion antitrust settlement.

Wilkinson is part of a close-knit antitrust bar that provides premium legal services to companies looking to preserve key deals or other transactions red-flagged by regulators. Boutiques like Wilkinson’s have carved out an important niche alongside their Big Law brethren in vying for high-stakes litigation work.

“People like us get more than our fair share of them because people are looking for real specialists,” Wilkinson told Bloomberg Law for a story last year.

Wilkinson is set to appear Friday for HPE in the Justice Department’s antitrust action. HPE executives reportedly met with Trump administration officials in an ultimately unsuccessful effort to preclude a lawsuit.

Wilkinson hasn’t previously handled legal work for HPE or its sister company, HP Inc., according to public records. Both companies were created from Hewlett-Packard Co., which split in 2015 into HP, a computer hardware company, and HPE, an information technology business.

The case is US v. Hewlett Packard Enterprise Co., N.D. Cal. 25-cv-00951, 2/20/25.