Nashville-based Waller Lansden Dortch & Davis has bolstered its healthcare transactions practice by signing Jay Greathouse from Norton Rose Fulbright.
Greathouse, who was promoted to partner at NRF in January, joins Waller’s 23-lawyer Austin office. He first got to know the firm when working opposite Waller attorneys on a transaction in 2016.
“[Waller] is committed to Texas and has a strong reputation in healthcare, specifically in the hospital and surgery center space where I practice,” Greathouse said. “Waller’s commitment to the middle market healthcare and financial services sectors and private equity investments between the two cemented my decision.”
Years after the 2016 deal where he was introduced to the firm, Waller left another significant impression on Greathouse in its representation of a potential buyer in a healthcare system purchase.
“While the transaction didn’t close, I saved the draft definitive agreement in that special folder every transactional attorney keeps,” he said.
Waller Managing Partner Matt Burnstein said Greathouse has “amassed experience on a variety of landmark deals” for “top-notch” healthcare clients.
Two of those recent deals include advising Christus Health in its April 2020 acquisition of Central Texas Medical Center in San Marcos and representing Fresno Surgical Hospital in its sale to United Surgical Partners International in July 2020.
The Christus deal was a complicated transaction that signed and closed as Covid-19 ramped up and involved a 170-bed hospital, a physician group, three parent-owned subsidiaries, three parent joint ventures and extensive real estate holdings.
Greathouse also was part of the Norton Rose Fulbright team that guided Christus in its $400 million acquisition of Longview-based Good Shepherd Health System in 2017.
Two of the biggest trends in the healthcare transactions space, according to Greathouse, are transaction speed and risk allocation.
“[Those trends] are directly related to the exponential growth of private equity and representation and warranty insurance in the healthcare space,” he said. “Transactions are moving faster, and risk is being fragmented and backstopped in new and more creative ways. For an industry that heavily relies on transactions for growth, these changes have significant impacts which ultimately reach all sectors of the industry.”
Outside of the healthcare space, The Lawbook has previously reported on a deal Greathouse was involved in with a Tennessee tie. As a senior associate in 2018, Greathouse was lead counsel for Delek US Holdings in the Brentwood, Tennessee company’s $75 million sale of West Coast asphalt terminals to San Antonio-based Andeavor.
Greathouse also has experience in the cannabis industry, having represented domestic and international cannabis companies in growth efforts and restructuring of assets. He says the sector is in a “fascinating place” as a growing number of states legalize cannabis.
“Federal inaction on legalization has created a number of market inefficiencies that will be rapidly corrected, like the advantage that Canada and early-adopting US states have in the market,” Greathouse said. “Other inefficiencies, like dueling state and municipal regulatory schemes, will take much longer to resolve, and likely not improve when federal regulations are put in place.”