Few beyond California’ s technology crowd recognise the name Larry Sonsini; none within its circle could fail to. For four decades he has been lawyer, adviser and friend to many prominent companies and investors. Some consider him the most powerful person in Silicon Valley. Companies beg for his law firm to represent them. The 65-year-old chairman of Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSG&R) has suddenly been thrust into the spotlight: first, for counselling many of the technology firms now under scrutiny for backdating stock options (and in some cases, serving on their boards); and more recently, as outside counsel to Hewlett-Packard (HP), for initially defending the board’s dubious investigative practices.
WSG&R boasts 600 lawyers and represents around half of Silicon Valley’s public companies, including Apple Sun Microsystems and Google. Last year it ranked first in private-equity and venture-capital deals, with nearly twice as many as its closest rival. Over the past five years WSG&R has worked on over 1 000 mergers and acquisitions, collectively worth over $ 260 billion.
The recent troubles cast a shadow over WSG&R’s reputation. Although Mr. Sonsini is not accused of wrongdoing himself, many of his firm’s clients are on the ropes. Former executives at Brocade Communications suffered criminal charges in July, Mr. Sonsini Served on Brocade’s board until last year and his firm was its outside counsel. He also was on the boards of Pixar, Echelon, Lattice Semiconductor, LSI Logic and Novell all firms at which the issuing of stock options is being called into question.
WSG&R dismisses the idea that Mr. Sonsini faced a conflict of interest by acting as both director and legal adviser to so many firms and says he did not advise HP in its investigation of board members. Mr. Sonsini initially said it was "well done and within legal limits". It now seems it was neither.
The phrase "on the ropes" in the second sentence of the third paragraph denotes （）
A. under control
B. in the danger
C. on the horizon
D. on the verge of collapse