Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
2023 was a year of contrasts: deals were up, but values were down; interest rates were up, but the energy sector was vibrant; dealmakers were cautious, but their lawyers were busy, busy, busy. The Corporate Deal Tracker has the year-end tally and analyses by our Texas experts from every corner of the market.
A team led from Houston advised the airline in a widebody aircraft inventory overhaul that will include as many as 200 Boeing 787s over the next decade. Along with earlier announced acquisitions, the company says it will be accepting delivery of some 700 new aircraft, averaging delivery of as many as two per week in 2023.
Whatever its purpose or intent, a letter from five GOP senators to 51 lawyers involved in ESG transactions at their firms was mystifying to those who would talk about it. Sent five days in advance of the recent mid-term elections, the threatening tone of the letters was in keeping with a series of attempts to curb, through their lawyers, corporate support for environmental mandates, energy transition investments and changes in corporate governance — despite increasingly vocal and influential investor demand.
The deal would make Blue Source Sustainable Forests Company — a joint venture with Oak Hill Advisors — the seventh largest private owner of forestlands in the nation. The Lawbook has the names of the Texas lawyers involved in the ground-breaking ESG deal.
Hong Kong-based Atlas Corp. is being taken private by a consortium of investors that includes the company's major stockholders and management. The deal was advised by some Texas-based lawyers. The Lawbook has the details.
A comprehensive listing of Texas-involved deals reported to The Texas Lawbook as announced or completed between July 1 and September 30, 2022.
The deal represents the largest renewables transaction of the year in an increasingly competitive transitional environment. Kirkland & Ellis and Jones Day advised Archaea and its management team on the deal. TLB has names.
Q3 M&A was a middling experience for dealmakers — in almost every respect. There were highlights, but not enough of them. Allen Pusey has the numbers. The good news: it could have been worse. In fact, it has been.
With the deal for cash and stock, Midland-based Diamondback expects to increase productive assets by 68,000 acres and 17 million barrels per day in their "backyard." The Lawbook has details, including the firms and many of the lawyers involved.
Joan Bullock, the first woman dean of the historically Black university's law school, says her abrupt dismissal in June was unexplained, undeserved and lacked due process. She is asking the court to enjoin the school from revoking her tenured teaching position until the facts surrounding the dismissal are heard by a faculty committee.
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