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Corporate Deal Tracker
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CDT SNAPSHOT
37.8%
In 2025, deal count for billion-dollar-plus deals increased by 37.8 percent versus 2024, and the aggregate valuations as a result soared between 2024 and 2025 by 41.7 percent.
CDT DATABASE YEAR-TO-DATE TRANSACTION TOTALS
FEB. 1, 2026
DEAL COUNT
44
DEAL VALUE
$22.4B
FEB. 1, 2025
DEAL COUNT
169
DEAL VALUE
$150.7B

Talen Energy Acquires Three Midwestern Power Plants for $3.5B

Houston energy infrastructure company Talen Energy said Thursday that it has acquired two power generating plants in the PJM market from New Jersey-based investment firm Energy Capital Partners for $2.55 billion cash and about $900 million in stock. Talen General Counsel John Wander worked with Kirkland & Ellis and White & Case on the deal.

Jason Philyaw

The Billion-Dollar Texas Lawyers

Only two women Texas deal lawyers led billion-dollar mergers and acquisitions in 2016. That same year, five Texas lawyers for Kirkland & Ellis were among the 43 attorneys who were the lead legal advisors on transactions that topped $1 billion and only one Kirkland partner ranked among The Texas Lawbook's Corporate Deal Tracker's Top 10 Texas dealmakers. What a difference a decade has made. New Corporate Deal Tracker data shows that, in 2025, 135 lawyers in Texas led or co-led billion-dollar deals for buyers, sellers or targets and the top three are women partners. And Kirkland's representation in the CDT billion-dollar lawyer rankings have skyrocketed, too.

Mark Curriden & Christi Trammell

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

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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

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

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