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Allen Pusey & Mark Curriden

Mark Chavez, GC of Ocean Point Terminals, Creates Success from an Environmental Mess in a Caribbean Paradise

When Mark Chavez was brought on board as general counsel at Ocean Point Terminals in June 2021, he knew he had his work cut out for him. Its major client, a refinery on the island of St. Croix in the U.S. Virgin Islands, had been shut down by the EPA after a series of environmental incidents and was barreling towards bankruptcy. With the two companies bound together in service agreements that threatened both, all he had to do was negotiate a divorce with the other company, fend off four class-action lawsuits, defend dozens of other lawsuits, arrange more than $100 million in bridge financing and new capital, help re-permit the refinery and salvage the company’s relationship with its island neighbors.

He did it; pretty much all of it. And as a result, Mark Chavez is a finalist for GC of the Year for a Small Legal Department (five or less lawyers) in the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards.

Will Marsh: This Son-of-a-Son-of-a-Lawyer Deals in the Complex

On what he later described as his best day as GC of Cactus Inc., a Houston-based wellhead and pressure-control provider, Will Marsh brought in the $621 million acquisition of tubing manufacturer FlexSteel Technologies Holdings.

The transformational deal marked a pretty good day for Cactus, as well. And now Marsh, Cactus and Bracewell, their outside counsel, are finalists in the 2023 Houston Corporate Counsel Awards for M&A Transaction of the Year.

Texas M&A Law Firm Rankings Q1-Q3

The Texas lawyers at 12 corporate law firms were involved as lead counsel in 20 or more M&A deals during the first nine months of 2022. Four firms were lead legal advisors in more than 60 deals. One firm saw its attorneys in Austin, Dallas and Houston hit triple digits in deal count for lead legal advisors during the first three quarters of 2022.

The Texas Lawbook has released its exclusive Corporate Deal Tracker M&A law firm rankings for Jan. 1 through Sept. 30. The mission is to document transactional work done by lawyers in the Lone Star state.

Staying Busy: Baker Botts, Five Other Firms Top H1 CapM Rankings

During a down year for the capital markets practice in Texas, a handful of law firms stayed busy. None were busier than the lawyers at Baker Botts. Latham, V&E, Gibson Dunn, Hunton AK and Bracewell also had impressive showings for the first six months of 2022, according to The Texas Lawbook’s exclusive Corporate Deal Tracker, which tracks securities offerings handled by lawyers in Texas.

Updated

Elite Law Firms Dominate Corp. Deal Tracker Law Firm M&A Rankings

Forty-four corporate law firms with offices in Texas reported that their lawyers in Texas played a substantive role in representing buyers, sellers, targets, conflicts committees, financial institutions and other third parties in various kinds of transactions in which assets were bought, sold or merged. A handful of elite law firms – Sidley, Kirkland, V&E, Latham, Gibson Dunn, to name a few – topped The Texas Lawbook’s exclusive Corporate Deal Tracker law firm rankings for the first half of 2022.

Several Texas-headquartered corporate firms also experienced a strong six months, including Haynes and Boone, Baker Botts, Akin Gump and Locke Lord. Four law firms had Texas lawyers who worked on nearly three-quarters of all the transactions that had deal values of $500 million or more.

CDT: H1 2022 – A Time for Smaller Deals

The first half of the year in Texas M&A was dominated by the mid- to lower-market transactions, according to data gathered by The Texas Lawbook Corporate Deal Tracker. Although dealmaking was robust, the values of those deals declined dramatically. Of 507 deals reported by Texas lawyers, only a handful were valued at $5 billion or more, and deals valued at more than $1 billion declined dramatically from 2021. On the other hand, deals valued under $100 million help push the year’s deal counts to impressive levels. The Texas Lawbook has the details.

The Texas Law Firms that Worked on the Most $1B+ M&A Deals in 2021

The battle among Texas lawyers to do the mega mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures is fierce. The Texas offices of 22 law firms represented parties in 115 M&A deals that were valued at $1 billion or more in 2021, according to The Texas Lawbook’s Corporate Deal Tracker. Seven different law firms had Texas lawyers advise on 10 or more of those billion-dollar corporate transactions.

Kirkland, Sidley, V&E, Latham Top CDT’s 2021 Law Firm M&A Rankings in Texas

Texas lawyers feasted on mergers and acquisitions in 2021. The Texas offices of Kirkland & Ellis did the most deals — though Sidley, Vinson & Elkins and Latham & Watkins were crazy busy. The Texas Lawbook‘s Corporate Deal Tracker lists the law firms that were involved in a record-smashing 929 corporate deals last year and the dealmakers who led those transactions.

Correction:The Texas Lawbook, in an earlier version of this article, undercounted the deal count and deal value for Gibson Dunn, Haynes and Boone and Locke Lord. We apologize for this error.

Kirkland, V&E, Shearman, Sidley, Latham Lead CDT Q1-Q3 M&A Dealmaking

In the first three quarters of 2021, there were well more than 600 M&A transactions involving Texas corporate lawyers — most of them led by Texas corporate lawyers. In the latest rankings from the Lawbook’s Corporate Deal Tracker database, the top 10 Texas-based offices and Texas-based firms gobbled up more than two-thirds of the transactions reported to The Lawbook. At the top, as they have been for nearly a decade, are Kirkland & Ellis and Vinson & Elkins. But there are also a few surprising new names on the list. The Lawbook has them all.

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