Bret J. Stancil

Bret Stancil is a mergers and acquisitions lawyer who leads complex transactions and delivers practical, business-minded counsel to help Jones Day's Silicon Valley clients navigate high-stakes deals with confidence and precision. He draws on extensive experience advising on some of the region's most notable transactions across industries, including technology and software, life sciences, digital media, and retail and consumer products. Over the course of his career, Bret has guided public and private companies and private equity firms through mergers and acquisitions, carve-outs, growth equity investments, leveraged buyouts, and other strategic transactions, both domestically and across borders.

Bret works closely with clients to translate complex challenges into clear, actionable strategies. He takes a proactive, solutions-oriented approach, anticipating potential issues and helping clients make informed decisions that support immediate and long-term objectives. By combining hands-on deal experience with a deep understanding of market dynamics, he serves as a trusted advisor who simplifies complexity, aligns stakeholders, and delivers results that are practical and strategically grounded.

Bret's representative experience prior to rejoining Jones Day in 2025 includes advising: Silver Lake on its investments in Vantage Data Centers, Khazna Data Centers, and Altera; Intuit on numerous transactions, including its acquisitions of Mailchimp, Credit Karma, TSheets, TradeGecko, OneSaas, SeedFi, and GoCo; Lyft on numerous transactions, including its acquisitions of Motivate and Blue Vision Labs; dbt Labs on its acquisitions of Transform Data and SDF Labs; PDF Solutions on its acquisition of SecureWISE, LLC; Discord and Meta on numerous confidential transactions; Joby Aviation on its acquisition of Blade's passenger business; SGH on its acquisition of Stratus Technologies; and ChemoCentryx on its acquisition by Amgen.