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Corporate Deal Tracker
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2025 RANKINGS REVIEW PERIOD
Jan. 14 through 16
The deadline for submitting deals for the 2025 CDT rankings has passed. The final period to review your firm’s filed deals is Jan. 14-16. A spreadsheet of your firm's deals is available upon request to Data Producer Christi Trammell at christi.trammell@texaslawbook.net.
CDT DATABASE YEAR-TO-DATE TRANSACTION TOTALS
JAN. 11, 2026
DEAL COUNT
18
DEAL VALUE
$8.96B
JAN. 11, 2025
DEAL COUNT
21
DEAL VALUE
$33.56B

Led By Kirkland, Four Law Firms Dominated $1B+ Texas-Led M&A Dealmaking in 2025

The Texas lawyers at four law firms — Kirkland & Ellis, Vinson & Elkins, Latham & Watkins and Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher — were the lead legal advisors in the majority of mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and divestitures valued at $1 billion or more last year.

In fact, attorneys in the Texas offices at those four large corporate law firms were lead counsel for the transactions principals — buyers, sellers or targets — in 67 of the 93 M&A deals in 2025 that had a value of $1 billion or more, according to new data from The Texas Lawbook’s Corporate Deal Tracker.

Mark Curriden & Christi Trammell

Corporate Cosmos: Texas Lawyers Navigate Record Billion-Dollar Deals Year

When Johnny Carson used to parody astronomer Carl Sagan on The Tonight Show, he’d stretch out the words “billions and billions” to accentuate the astronomer’s Mid-Atlantic delivery. The line became so famous that many people assumed Sagan said it. 

He never did. 

Yet Sagan, with some humor about it, leaned into the myth, even later calling one of his books Billions & Billions as a nod to Carson’s cosmic exaggeration.

Now we have to borrow the phrase again. Not to describe galaxies or particles of star stuff, but to capture the sheer scale of billion-dollar-plus deals handled by Texas lawyers last year.

Jeff Schnick

Vistra Buys Cogentrix Energy in Deal Valued at About $4B

Vistra Corp. said Monday that it acquired Cogentrix Energy for about $2.3 billion cash, about $925 million in common shares and the assumption of $1.5 billion of debt. Vistra used Latham & Watkins, Sidley Austin and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton as outside legal counsel. King & Spalding advised Cogentrix.

Jason Philyaw

The Key Deals of 2025: Business-As-Usual, With a Mona Lisa Smile

The undisputed dealmaker of the year 2025 was artificial intelligence.

Its needs, whether for infrastructure, software, data, cooling, tubing for cooling, electrical parts, real estate or any other basic or specialized situation, seemed to play a role, directly or indirectly, in nearly every deal reported to The Texas Lawbook this year.

Allen Pusey and Jason Philyaw sifted through the more than 1,200 M&A transactions that have passed across our desks over the last 12 months to pick the most significant deals from last year.

Allen Pusey & Jason Philyaw

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In AI Gold Rush, Capital Markets Learn to Live Off Data

In the shengxiao, the year 2025 was represented by the snake. As the sixth of the 12 animals in the Chinese zodiac, the snake represents both mystery and transformation.

For capital markets lawyers that is exactly what 2025 was supposed to be, a year of pipeline deals, AI-driven demand and a new presidential administration primed to relieve public companies from the inordinate burdens associated with their public-ness.

Well, it was. And it wasn't.

It's been a busier year than those passed. But capital markets have changed and are changing. The yearly stats say so. And so do the lawyers who make their living assembling them.

Allen Pusey

Harbour Energy Buys LLOG Exploration for $3.2B

Harbour Energy said Monday that it agreed to acquire Louisiana-based LLOG Exploration Co. for $3.2 billion, including $2.7 billion cash and $500 million of common stock, giving the U.K. oil company its first deepwater presence in the U.S. Bracewell advised Harbour with a team led by partners in London, Houston and Washington, D.C.

Jason Philyaw

JAPEX Acquires DJ Basin Assets for $1.3B

Willkie Farr & Gallagher advised JAPEX and Kirkland & Ellis advised Verdad Resources Intermediate Holdings on the deal, which includes more than 100,000 acres of tight oil assets in Colorado and Wyoming.

Allen Pusey

Energy Lenders Fall Back in Credit Survey

Energy-lending banks are projecting 2026 average oil prices of $55.44 per barrel, a $1.50/BBL decline from projections six months ago, according to the latest Energy Bank Price Deck Survey from Haynes Boone released Dec. 17.

Allen Pusey

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