Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
The management of Luby’s Inc. chalked up a big win on Friday – and so did several Sidley lawyers in Texas. The Houston-based restaurant chain beat back a proxy fight by Bandera, a New York-based investment firm run by Jeff Gramm, son of former U.S. Sen. Phil Gramm. Claire Poole has the details.
M&A in the U.S. oil and gas exploration and production industry was hot in 2018, hitting its highest total in four years at $84.3 billion, according to Drillinginfo. Eight of the year’s top 10 deals were in the second half. But thanks to sliding oil prices, fourth-quarter deal value came in at $20.9 billion, a bit off from its third quarter 2018 high.
It’s not much fun to be general counsel of a company going through a sale which, if successful, would likely put you out of a job. But Jim Mutrie handled his company’s $9.5 billion sale to Concho Resources last year like a pro. Now he's RSP Permian's former general counsel and a finalist for an Outstanding Corporate Counsel Award.
Trevor Wommack has left Vinson & Elkins to join Latham & Watkins as a partner in its finance group in Houston. The move, Latham's first significant lateral hiring since 2012, signifies the firm is in growth mode.
You would think a merger between two affiliated entities would be easy to pull off. Not so with Energy Transfer Equity’s purchase of Energy Transfer Partners, which is a finalist for the 2018 M&A Deal of the Year award by the Dallas/Fort Worth chapter of the Association of Corporate Counsel.
When Capital One’s financial services division decided to exit the mortgage origination and servicing business in 2017, it had a pretty sticky problem: How do you shed a portfolio of 113,000 mortgages valued at $17 billion in an orderly and cost-conscious fashion? Apparently, you task your Assistant GC Elizabeth Chostner to deal with the details.
With the beginning of every new year comes a new round of data showing how dealmaking fared in the previous year – and projections of what’s to come. Last year was the most active year ever recorded for private equity-backed buyout deals, according to data from Preqin. Claire Poole has more insights from 2018 and highlights the deals of the past week.
The law firm said Monday it counseled Dallas-based Discovery Midstream Partners II and Discovery Midstream Holdings II management on a $1 billion initial equity commitment from Stonepeak Infrastructure Partners. Claire Poole has the details and the lawyers involved.
The midstream energy markets have been difficult, if not volatile, for some time now. In addition to the final deals of 2018, Claire Poole's latest CDT Weekly Roundup discusses a new analysis by Morgan Stanley's Tom Abrams, who suggests 10 things to watch for among midstreams in the coming year.
There are lots of reasons for mergers and acquisitions: to simplify corporate structure; to diversify product mix; to extend geographic reach. There is also the need for cash: to pay down debt, to boost shareholder return or to invest in lucrative prospects. In her Top 10 Texas M&A Deals, Claire Poole found an array of those motives on display in 2018.
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