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Claire Poole

Claire Poole is a senior writer at The Texas Lawbook, where she covers corporate transactions.

Claire Poole

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.

CDT Roundup: 23 Deals, 14 Firms, 222 Lawyers, $22.6B

We know it's routine for to push some older deals our way at the end of each quarter. Here at the CDT Roundup we sometimes imagine firms pulling out pockets and searching under seat cushions for league table qualifiers they might have missed. But sometimes in the late-arriving flotsam we find deal work worthy of mention, even though it has appeared on our doorstep a tad late. Such is the case of Justin Hoffman, a partner at Winston & Strawn in Houston, whose work leading more than a few capital markets transactions attracted our attention. We look at a few of those deals and a take in a few observations about his practice along with the usual summaries of last week's transactions and the lawyers behind them.

Claire Poole

SLB Scoops Up ChampionX for $7.7B

Latham & Watkins was the main outside counsel advising SLB while Weil assisted ChampionX. The combination is expected to expand SLB’s presence in the less cyclical and growing production and recovery space.

Claire Poole

CDT Roundup: 12 Deals, 8 Firms, 136 Lawyers, $9.3B

The end of Q1 this week suggests a healthy M&A market during the opening round of 2024, with deal volumes rising globally by 26 percent, with the U.S. volumes even high and topping the $400 billion value mark, according to data from Dealogic. Claire Poole examines the deals behind the data in this week's CDT Roundup and reviews the Easter week action on the Texas M&A front.

Claire Poole

CDT Roundup: 18 Deals, 17 Firms, 266 Lawyers, $5.5B

It was an unusual week for M&A, especially energy deals. Not just for the fact that there were so many of them, but for the fact that the flavor of the week was oilfield services. Claire Poole caught up with Gibson partner Gerry Spedale, who led the biggest deal reported last week for his longtime client Dril-Quip, a $1.5 billion merger agreement with Innovex Downhole Solutions. He shared a few insights on what is making energy M&A so attractive these days — and she shares her usual list of Texas-related deals.

Claire Poole

CDT Roundup: 23 Deals, 21 Firms, 218 Lawyers, $4.7B

When watching the M&A markets it's easy to become fixated on billion-dollar deals. But the bread-and-butter transactions of a truly healthy market lie in the middle. Having looked at the high-end last week, the CDT Roundup this week checks out Citizens Financial's 13th annual survey of CEOs, CFOs and private equity principals which found them warming up to what they see as an economy free of the kind of headwinds that have chilled expectations in recent years. And the data suggests a surge may be in the making as 8 in 10 PE firms see themselves as stronger buyers than they were in 2023. Claire Poole has the particulars along with the usual summary of Texas-related deal activity last week.

Claire Poole

CDT Roundup: 20 Deals, 19 Firms, 372 Lawyers, $9.1B

Maybe you've already noticed, but M&A is buzzing in the first two months of 2024. But the buzz is not just in Texas. At the moment things are buzzing globally and across sectors, according to a report by LSEG Deals Intelligence. Boosted by nine megadeals ($10 billion or more), M&A transactions announced through February were valued at $522 billion, up 75 percent over the same period in 2023. This week's CDT Roundup takes a look at the fine print in that LSEG report, along with the 20 deals reported by Texas lawyers last week.

Claire Poole

CDT Roundup: 19 Deals, 12 Firms, 248 Lawyers, $16.4B

Before Houston-based Intuitive Machines landed the first privately funded craft on the moon, they landed a merger partner and a major investor with the help of the Houston office of Latham & Watkins. This week, The Roundup looks back at those deals and the lawyers who worked on them — along with the $16 billion in Texas-related deals reported last week.

Claire Poole

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