Amelia Xu is only 30 years old, but as a lawyer she’s already been involved in 14 separate corporate transactions valued at $100 million or more – two of which exceeded $1 billion.
Chinese by birth and Texan by choice, Xu also has worked on another dozen major deals – from certificate offerings and securitizations to operational service agreements and private investments in public entities (or so-called PIPEs) – for businesses in the energy sector and financial institutions.
But Xu’s biggest, most important transaction closed last November when she led Tidewater Inc., a Houston-based international petroleum services operation, in its acquisition of GulfMark Offshore for $1.25 billion.
“The combination is significant because it created a global offshore support vessel (OSV) leader based in Texas and positioned our company to capitalize on superior growth opportunities as the OSV sector recovery gains traction,” said Xu, who has been Tidewater’s corporate counsel and assistant corporate secretary for less than two years.
Xu also counseled the board and management on highly complex issues, including post-restructuring debt arrangements and SEC issues arising from a public merger, and she navigated the company through a successful shareholder’s vote for the GulfMark merger despite a third-party’s bid for the target.
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook Xu has recognized Xu as a finalist for the 2019 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards Rookie of the Year.
“In her relatively new tenure at Tidewater, Amelia has advised the board and management during a critical transition time on many sensitive and complex issues,” Tidewater investor relations director Jason Stanley wrote in nominating Xu for the award.
Stanley pointed out that Xu advised the company on securities filings and corporate governance issues on several matters, including:
· A brand new seven-member board after its emergence from Chapter 11;
· The addition of three new board members as a result of the merger;
· The departure of the pre-bankruptcy CEO, the hiring of a new CEO and the replacement of five senior officers;
· The change of reporting status of the company, and
· The application of the fresh-start accounting rule, and a change of business segments worldwide.
“For a new in-house counsel with six years of top law firm practice experiences, Amelia has shown great managing skills for high-profile deals, extraordinary judgment on legal and business issues and deep understanding of business strategy,” Stanley wrote. “She is a trusted adviser for business on multiple aspects, and she is a deliverer of outstanding legal services.”
Weil Gotshal partner Jim Griffin said the GulfMark deal was “complicated on a number of fronts and it required Xu to handle a lot of moving parts.
“Amelia really threw herself into the transaction, facilitating the interaction between the Tidewater team and the legal teams on the deal and continually pushing the deal along,” Griffin said. “She did a fantastic job in that role. Her calm under pressure and ability to work with a number of people really stood out.”
Born in the southwestern part of China – “I call it the Louisiana of China,” she said – Xu and her family moved to Beijing when she was 12. Her mother is a neurologist and her father was a geologist for a large oil and gas company. They lived in a three-bedroom apartment on the 22nd floor of a high-rise in downtown Beijing.
“My dad was on the cutting edge of the shale revolution in China, and my mom still practices medicine,” she said. “I was born during the one-child policy in China. When I was six, McDonalds and KFC opened in China. No one else in my family liked burgers, but I loved the double cheeseburger.
“Growing up in China gave me a very driven personality,” she said. “I worked hard and there was pressure to succeed.”
While Xu had no lawyers in her family, she first started thinking about a career in law right after high school when she did an internship with a top Chinese law firm that handled U.S. investments in her native country. She attended Peking University, which is widely viewed as the Harvard of China, where she obtained degrees in law and economics. Professors there informed her about an exchange program the school offered with the University of Texas School of Law.
“My parents are pretty protective,” she said. “They thought I would get my doctorate degree in the U.S. and then return to China to get a job and live.”
Xu moved to Austin when she was 21 and knew pretty quickly that she wanted to stay in the U.S.
“I love the freedom here,” she said. “I love football. If you go to UT, you have to have a love of football.
“Texas gave me a new identity being a proud Asian American/Texan,” she said. “I see myself as a ‘Texas girl’ and Houston is my second hometown. I jog many beautiful trails inside the loop. I discover unusual beauty of the city. I still have my Chinese identity when I visit China, but culture-wise, I am Americanized.”
Xu graduated with her law degree from UT in 2012 and went to work as an associate in the Houston office of Mayer Brown. In 2014, she moved to New York, where she worked as a lawyer at Cadwalader. One year later, she moved back to Houston to join the corporate energy practice of Paul Hastings.
Along the way, she worked on some groundbreaking M&A deals, including representing Chinese-owned Sinochem Group in a $1.7 billion joint venture with Pioneer Natural Resources.
“It was the very first deal I worked on that I contributed my legal skills, my Chinese skills and cultural understanding of Chinese energy companies into the success. But it also was one of the last major investments from Chinese national oil companies (NOCs) into the ever-booming onshore shale production market in Texas and lower 48 U.S. before the 2014 oil bust and the currently tight U.S.-China investment regime,” Xu said. “It almost, in a sense, marked an end of an era, one that I proudly participated in. I am hopeful for the dawn of a new era of international businesses for our energy industry.”
Tidewater, fresh from exiting bankruptcy, hired Xu in 2016.
Lawyers who have worked with Xu since she moved in-house said she has done an amazing job.
“I witnessed firsthand the great business and legal judgment that Amelia exhibited in assisting Tidewater’s general counsel in leading the Tidewater team,” said Maryam Naghavi, a former Weil Gotshal lawyer who worked on the GulfMark transaction with Xu and also nominated her for the award.
“Amelia impressively combined her legal skills with her business judgment and was able to effectively orchestrate communication among outside counsel, the management, the board and the various departments of Tidewater that were involved in the transaction,” said Naghavi, who is now a lawyer at Willkie Farr.
“She makes herself available as needed and is very open to suggestions and ideas, but also capable of coming up with creative resolutions to complex legal matters,” she said. “For example, she actively participated in the discussions involving treatment of GulfMark’s debt, approach toward a competing third party bid and Tidewater’s integration efforts.”
Mike Margolis, a partner at Blank Rome, said Xu has become a trusted advisor for Tidewater’s corporate executives.
“Amelia methodically built a strong foundation of skills and expertise at some of the nation’s most competitive national law firms before going in-house,” Margolis said. “Despite her young age, she has shown extraordinary judgment on legal/business issues and great management skills for high-profile deals.”
Xu said she enjoys being in-house in the corporate legal department because she is able to be involved in the business after the deal is done.
“My work products, advice and input on the strategy have a direct impact on the business,” she said. “In addition to legal analysis, I now need to make judgment calls, and my judgment has a direct impact on where the business teams will go. It’s great to be part of something bigger than just doing deals.”