Baker Botts announced this week that corporate partner Doug Getten, who previously led the corporate department and headed up talent acquisition for Paul Hastings’ Houston office, has joined the firm’s capital markets practice.
The addition of Getten builds on a Baker Botts strength – underwriter-side capital markets work – and reinforces a practice group that has seen a handful of departures this year.
Getten is well acquainted with the Baker Botts team and said he immediately began a dialogue when a few of his friends reached out to gauge his interest in joining forces.
“I really appreciated the overall breadth – not just of the energy practice but of the firm as a whole,” he said. “Also, the firm is very focused on the future of energy and energy transition.”
Getten said the capital markets side of his practice has been much busier this year compared to last. In March, he advised the underwriters on Beyond Meat’s $1 billion convertible senior notes offering.
In oil and gas, Getten represented UBS last year in the financing of Mach Resources and Bayou City Energy’s $220 million acquisition for the assets of failed Oklahoma shale firm Alta Mesa Resources.
“That transaction was signed up in early January, and it did not close until several weeks into quarantine,” Getten said. “We were dealing with the volatile energy markets and well as figuring out how to negotiate a deal when everyone was locked down in their homes.”
Getten says three issues his oil and gas clients are spending significant time thinking through are the need to return capital to investors, ESG and how best to transition into a more climate-friendly business. A key issue that is industry agnostic is managing how and when to return to the office and finding the right balance of work from home and in-person.
While the SPAC frenzy has settled down considerably over the past few weeks, Getten says there is a “tremendous amount” of SPAC capital that will need to be deployed in the next 12 to 18 months and he expects to see a lot of De-SPACs focused on renewables. The Houston corporate lawyer says he also predicts an uptick in consolidation on the upstream side.