Frisco-based Keurig Dr Pepper agreed to acquire Dutch coffee giant JDE Peet’s for about $18.4 billion cash, the company announced early Monday morning. KDP said it will pay $37.26 a share, which represents a 33 percent premium to JDE Peet’s 90-day average price.
Closing of the deal is expected in the first half of next year, which is when KDP plans to separate into two independent, publicly traded companies: the beverage company will stay in Frisco and be home to the company’s soda and beverage brands; and the coffee entity will combine the company’s single-serve K-Cups with JDE Peet’s more than 50 brands of coffee, tea and hot chocolate. The headquarters of the new coffee company will be in Burlington, Mass., with an international headquarters in Amsterdam.
The deal was led in-house by KDP chief legal officer Anthony Shoemaker, VP & assistant general counsel Mark Jackson and SVP & assistant general counsel Lisa Dalfonso, with Paul Weiss serving as outside counsel, led by a New York team of Jim Langston, Chelsea Darnell and Alexia Yang. KDP also utilized Cleary Gottlieb as its antitrust counsel on the deal. A&O Shearman advised JDE Peet’s.
“Paul Weiss has proven to be incredible partners in this transaction, particularly in counseling our Board and navigating cross border issues,” Shoemaker said in an email to The Texas Lawbook. “They have provided outstanding client service to KDP across the spectrum of practice areas involved in a deal like this, including M&A, finance, tax, securities and employee benefits.”
A global corporate law firm with more than 1,000 lawyers and revenues exceeding $2.5 billion last year, Paul Weiss has been actively working to enter the Texas legal market for the past two years, specifically targeting Houston for its first Texas office, according to reports, but has not yet done so. Attempts to recruit top partners from firms like Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Sidley Austin and Baker Botts have so far not materialized, despite offers as high as $10–15 million in multi-year guarantees, according to Bloomberg Law.
While it doesn’t have a Texas office, that hasn’t stopped Paul Weiss from serving as an advisor to companies headquartered here in some of the state’s largest deals, such as KDP in this latest transaction, Chevron in its $55 billion purchase of Hess, as well as Endeavor Energy’s $26 billion merger with Diamondback Energy in February 2024. In the first half of the year, Paul Weiss recorded 103 deals worldwide, according to Bloomberg Law, good for 7.9 percent share of H1 announced global deal volume, which ranked the firm behind Latham, Kirkland, Sullivan & Cromwell, Davis Polk and Wachtell.
Meanwhile, it’s been a busy couple of years for Shoemaker and his department, who were honored as the DFW Corporate Legal Department of the Year in January at the DFW Corporate Counsel Awards. You can read The Lawbook‘s profile of Shoemaker and the KDP in-house legal team from earlier this year.
KDP expects the acquisition of Peet’s will “unlock incremental operating and financial benefits,” including about $400 million in cost savings over three years while being accretive to earnings per share in year one.
“Today’s announcement marks a transformational moment in the beverage industry, as we build on KDP’s disruptive legacy by creating two winning companies, including a new global coffee champion,” Keurig Dr Pepper CEO Tim Cofer said in a news release. Cofer will be the CEO of the beverage company, while KDP financial chief Sudhanshu Priyadarshi will become the top executive of the coffee company.
KDP was formed seven years ago when Dr Pepper Snapple Group merged with Keurig Green Mountain.