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Elon Musk's SpaceX filed a Form S-1 with the Securities and Exchange Commission Wednesday for a much-anticipated initial public offering of its common stock that will trade on Nasdaq and Nasdaq Texas under the symbol "SPCX."
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher is advising SpaceX led by capital markets partners George Sampas in New York and Hillary Holmes, Harrison Tucker and Atma Kabad in Houston. Davis Polk is advising the underwriters.
Last week began with a Pennsylvania groundhog seeing his shadow, an occurrence that supposedly forewarns a stubborn winter. In Texas, where the temps reached 70 degrees and above, such news is met with little more than a shrug.
Would that Punxsutawney Phil had forewarned us that a $58 billion deal on Monday to create a shale oil giant would be immediately dwarfed on Tuesday by the gobsmacking $1.25 trillion marriage of a satellite delivery system and an AI chatbox with a reputation for snarkiness.
That and more in this edition of CDT Roundup.
The undisputed dealmaker of the year 2025 was artificial intelligence.
Its needs, whether for infrastructure, software, data, cooling, tubing for cooling, electrical parts, real estate or any other basic or specialized situation, seemed to play a role, directly or indirectly, in nearly every deal reported to The Texas Lawbook this year.
Allen Pusey and Jason Philyaw sifted through the more than 1,200 M&A transactions that have passed across our desks over the last 12 months to pick the most significant deals from last year.
The week that ended Sept. 13 saw 21 transactions valued at $21 billion. That doesn't count the late arrivals and deals outside our usual space (See "Late Arrivals and other matters..." at the bottom of this column). It's a pretty good week when you average $1 billion per deal. For comparison, the week prior, we saw 19 deals for $8.5 billion and 24 deals for nearly $11 billion at this time last year. But each week seems a bit stranger than the last. That and more in this edition of CDT Roundup.
The week that ended Sept. 6 saw 20 deals with a reported value of $8.6 billion. That seems, at first glance, far better than last week's 10 total deals for $3.5 billion. And it is. But not better than the 12 deals for $20 billion we saw this time last year.
But a closer look shows that the numbers were thin on money actually changing hands. First off, most of the money reported was on the capital markets side, $5.7 billion of the $8.6 billion reported. And on the M&A side, we saw $2.9 billion reported, but $1.57 of that was in a single midstream deal.
That and more in this edition of CDT Roundup.
Energy is back in the news, and not in a good way. The Texas grid, which has worked remarkably well in developing new energy sources, crashed mercilessly this week. With warmer weather on the horizon, get ready for the cleanup, the political recriminations and the lawsuits. They could last for years, suggests one expert. The CDT Roundup looks at the mess, in addition to last week's dealmaking.
As we stumble toward the end of a ridiculously complicated year, our gift to you this holiday is to keep it as short and sweet; at least as short and sweet as last week's 18 transactions will allow.
There were 10 transactions reported to the CDT Roundup last week. Three of them were automotive. In itself it doesn't really mean anything. But a closer look continues to suggest that Texas dealmaking is locked into a future that runs the full swath of modern life. Allen Pusey and Caroline Evans report.
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