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Claire Poole is a senior writer at The Texas Lawbook, where she covers corporate transactions.
Claire Poole is a business writer based in Houston. She previously was a senior writer at The Deal, where she spent 16 years covering mergers and acquisitions, private equity and investing in the energy sector. Before The Deal, she worked as a reporter and staff writer at Forbes, was editor of El Financiero International and Mexico Business and was a contributing editor at LatinTrade. She also contributed articles to Money, Worth, BusinessWeek and Texas Monthly.
Claire’s email is claire.poole@texaslawbook.net.
Last week brought a surprise: James Chenoweth, one of the most active tax advisors in Texas M&A, left Gibson Dunn. The bigger surprise is where he went. The CDT Roundup has that, and the usual roster of the week's Texas dealmakers.
The consideration includes giving the infrastructure fund a stake in SunPower. Texas lawyers from Latham advised on the deal.
Last week saw something not seen for awhile: the IPO debut of an oilfield services company. The $288 million deal was a bit below target, but it may have signaled investor interest in something too often unfamiliar in the industry: capital discipline. The CDT Roundup has details on that deal, as well as the usual weekly deal rosters.
Texas lawyers from Latham and Kirkland worked on the deal, which the parties claim will create the largest pure-play exploration and production company in the Permian's Delaware Basin.
A volatile stock market has economists uttering the "R" word: Recession. And while most analysts are discounting the likelihood of full-blown downturn, Andrew Akers of PitchBook has three scenarios that could affect dealmaking for the near future. Those possibilities, and a review of last week's deals in the CDT Roundup.
While recent commodity prices might suggest a favorable climate for M&A energy transactions, they aren't really happening. O&G deals were down in value by 41 percent during the first quarter of 2022. Deals worth $1 billion or more were down nearly 60 percent, according to GlobalData. The CDT Roundup spells out details, along with names of the lawyers behind last week's transactions.
After only 16 months at Willkie, Jesse Myers has moved to Gibson Dunn. He joins former Willkie colleague, Michael De Voe Piazza, who made the move to Gibson in March. He also joins a cadre of transactional partners who have left Willkie in the past several months. Claire Poole has the details.
A Haynes and Boone survey on oil and gas borrowing bases is reflecting a new confidence in the industry's immediate future. The result is unsurprising, given the steady rise in prices since their nadir in April 2020. Perhaps more surprising is the increasing adoption and disclosure of ESG policies at O&G firms, the basis for a second Haynes and Boone survey. The CDT Roundup discusses both, along with the weekly roll call of lawyers involved in last week's deals.
The firm has brought back two former Fulbright lawyers from Baker Botts and Winston & Strawn.
The firm has recruited three partners from Willkie Farr & Gallagher to officially open its third Texas outpost.
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