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There are some new leaders atop the 2024 M&A scoreboard. Most of the regulars are there, as well as some fresh faces, according to The Texas Lawbook’s exclusive Corporate Deal Tracker. The CDT has two separate rankings for Texas-led transactions — deal count and deal value. Lawyers on both lists had an extraordinary 2024.
Perkins Coie announced Tuesday that it is adding a group of three Texas-based partners, Kyle Fox, Richard Dusenbury and John-Paul Haskins, to its M&A and PE practice. The trio joins Perkins Coie from Greenberg Traurig, where each group member worked for at least five years, primarily serving clients within its M&A and PE practice group.
In the doubtful case that dealmakers were getting too giddy for their own good, the folks at the London Stock Exchange (LSEG) have published their latest global scorecard on YTD deals in M&A and the capital markets. They should come with a warning: "Keep antacids close." They are presented without comment or explanation, so the CDT Roundup is serving them pretty much raw — but with a generous side-order of last weeks deals and the names of the lawyers who handled them.
Whatever else may have happened in the Texas-related capital markets during 2024, the deals they represented left behind some unnervingly easy math. As is true of most years, debt issues outnumbered equity offerings about 2 to 1. But that doesn't mean there weren't some interesting trends and transactions alongside the usual reshuffling of debt.
Gannett announced Wednesday that it agreed to sell the Austin American-Statesman to media conglomerate Hearst, the owner of the Houston Chronicle and San Antonio Express-News.
The cash and stock deal, advised by Kirkland & Ellis and Vinson & Elkins, comes a little more than a year after Diamondback's $26 billion merger with Endeavor Energy. It involves about 40 thousand acres near or adjacent to Diamondback's core holdings in the Permian.
Sara Garcia Duran never considered becoming a lawyer until she was asked to make a decision while on a student trip in high school. She thought about being a politician, but that option didn't sound terribly appealing. “I’ll go join the lawyers,” Duran said.
The M&A-focused partner at Sidley is pleased with her choice. Duran recently gave The Texas Lawbook an in-depth look into her journey and her experience as a woman working as a Texas dealmaker.
The phrase "Drill, Baby, Drill," may be short code for the new administration's energy policy, but according to a recent analysis by S&P Global, don't expect the slogan to characterize the short-term CapX plans for major O&G producers. Stalled by stubborn market prices, fossil fuel production by the world's largest energy producer has plateaued for the moment, a situation that is likely to characterize all of 2025. The CDT Roundup takes a look at the numbers for the U.S. and Texas, as well as the usual summary of Texas-driven transactions reported last week.
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