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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.
Refinitiv's numbers are out, and they tell us what we already know: M&A is down worldwide, marking the slowest nine months since 2013. But there's good news, and the Roundup has it — along with the weekly list of deals and the lawyers who advised them.
Sidley counseled National Western, the second time in the last three years that the firm has assisted with sale of a publicly traded insurance company associated with the Moody family.
Skadden's Eric Otness co-led the team advising the Chicago-based target, which manages 2 million parking spaces, and Sidley's Bill Howell counseled the buyer's investor Eldridge.
Non-SPAC IPOs are on the uptick in Texas typified by one filed last month by Mach Resources, a company created by natural gas icon Tom Ward, former jefe at Chesapeake Energy and a few other familiar energy stops. Claire Poole looks at that deal along with the firms and lawyers behind last week's 17 Texas-related transactions.
The pair worked on various public and private offerings of equity and debt securities as well as IPO's, often involving SPACs.
By now it should be obvious that deal volume was down in the second quarter. The reasons aren't mysterious: Persisting inflation and a short spurt of bank failures beginning with Silicon Valley Bank signaled the drop in deals. But middle market deals, while down, have fared better than most, according to Boston-based Capstone Partners. This week's CDT Roundup explores their prediction that deal volume in the $100 million to $500 million range is set for a rebound — along with our summaries of a week that saw a whopping 27 transactions involving lots and lots of Texas-based lawyers.
In simultaneous acquisitions from three different sellers, Vital promises to add scale in the Permian Basin, increase cash flow and reduce leverage. Texas lawyers from six different firms were involved: Akin, Baker Botts, Jackson Walker, Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins and Vinson & Elkins.
Kirkland dominated this week's Roundup with participation in four of the seven M&A/Fundings deals reported last week. But according to the firm, that's also been the case during the summer, especially in the energy sector. They provided some rankings from Deal Point Data to back that up. We tested their data against some numbers from our own Corporate Deal Tracker, and the results may reveal some good news for everyone. And, of course, there's the usual rundown of firms and lawyers involved in all the deals last week.
Sidley Austin and Haynes Boone counseled Dallas-based Avantax and Willkie assisted Genstar-backed Cetera as consolidation continues in the asset management industry.
The UT Law grad joins the firm's energy and infrastructure practice. Her past clients have included Neste, Mitsui and Kimmeridge as well as various consumer brands.
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