Shearman Beefs Up CapM, Litigation Practices in Houston

Shearman & Sterling announced two new partner hires in Houston this week.

Litigator Samuel Cooper and capital markets attorney Taylor Landry have joined Shearman, Cooper from Paul Hastings and Landry from Hunton Andrews Kurth.

Cooper’s disputes practice encompasses corporate governance and transaction litigation, complex commercial litigation, commercial arbitration, securities and shareholder litigation, antitrust litigation, as well as enforcement and internal investigations. He is the fourth Texas litigation partner Shearman has added in the last eight months.

In 2020 Cooper and Shearman worked together to defend a breach-of-fiduciary-duty lawsuit brought by an institutional investor in Delaware Chancery Court stemming from the 2017 merger of General Electric and Baker Hughes. Cooper represented former Baker Hughes CEO Martin Craighead and ex-CFO Kimberly Ross while Shearman advised GE. The court dismissed all of the plaintiffs’ claims except one against Craighead that is still being litigated.

Last year Cooper filed an amicus brief on behalf of billionaire and Dallas Mavericks owner Mark Cuban and hedge-fund managers Phillip Goldstein and Nelson Obus in Jarkesy v. SEC, a case that was argued at the U.S. Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals in October.

Before his nine-year tenure at Paul Hastings, Cooper practiced for nearly 20 years at Baker Botts.

Landry started his career at Andrews Kurth (now Hunton Andrews Kurth) in 2011 after graduating from South Texas College of Law. He regularly advises master limited partnerships, corporations and other public and private entities in the energy value chain with assets including reserves, pipelines, storage, processing and gathering facilities.

Landry has worked closely with veteran Hunton AK capital markets partner Mike O’Leary.

Last year the two were underwriters’ counsel in Kinder Morgan senior notes offerings of $800 million and $750 million; advised residential solar fintech venture Sunlight Financial in a merger with blank-check firm Spartan Acquisition that valued the combined company at $1.3 billion; advised Piper Sandler & Co. in an equity distribution agreement with KLX Energy Services Holdings; and guided Crestwood Equity Partners in matters relating to the exit of one of its major stockholders.

In 2020 Landry and O’Leary represented the special committee of Pure Acquisition Corp.’s directors, an oil-and-gas exploration and production-focused special purpose acquisition company, in connection with its initial business combination. The deal resulted in a newly formed and publicly traded company, HighPeak Energy Inc., with an estimated enterprise value of about $900 million.