The First Half of 2024: The Role of Billion-Dollar Deals
Nothing says Texas M&A better than a billion-dollar deal. And in the first half of 2024, there were plenty of them.
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Nothing says Texas M&A better than a billion-dollar deal. And in the first half of 2024, there were plenty of them.
Sidley, led out of Dallas, advised the publicly traded IDEX. Cooley assisted the employee-owned Mott, which fits the buyer's "sweet spot" of highly engineered, configurable mission-critical components.
The CDT Roundup occasionally spotlights a lawyer whose pops up in connection with one of our larger deals. Mitch Tiras has popped up lots of times over the years, this last week in connection with the $1.54 billion Quanta Services acquisition of Cupertino Electric. We take a quick look at his recent work, along with the usual list of deals reported last week and the lawyers behind them.
A mostly Texas team from Akin Gump advised Tellurian while Norton Rose Fulbright advised Woodside, which the Australian company claims positions it to be a global LNG powerhouse.
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman advised Spokane-based Clearwater on the deal, which included lawyers from Austin. Sofidel, a major provider of tissue products in Europe and eight states in the U.S., says it plans to continue its expansion in North American markets.
Out-of-state lawyers led the Hunton Andrews Kurth team that counseled the buyer and a Dallas group from Winston assisted the seller on the transaction, which comes with a 30-day "go-shop" period.
We've passed the halfway point of 2024, so it seems like a good time to make a periodic check of our own metrics. This week we look at the table that hides in plain sight inside our column and actually use it to measure what we've done; specifically, a statistical survey of the deal summaries we've published so far this year. As usual, the numbers are surprising, even to us; especially the number of names of lawyers that have showed up in the column. And, of course, we include even more names from the deals we received last week.
Despite a general slowdown in global mergers and acquisitions activity in recent years, certain U.S. buyers have continued to target U.K. businesses and assets for acquisition. Interest in the U.K. M&A market has been further supported by its perceived safety in a global macro environment that appears increasingly challenging. This article highlights key considerations for a U.S. buyer interested in pursuing an M&A transaction in the U.K., with specific notes relevant to Texas business.
The deal follows Blackstone's purchase last month of Phillips 66's interest in REX, and further consolidates Blackstone control of more than 7,000 miles of midwest oil and gas pipeline.
Deals are deals, unless they turn out not to be. The proposed $4 billion acquisition of Houston-based Mattress Firm by rival Tempur Sealy seemed like a deal. But the Federal Trade Commission last week voted 5-0 to stop the negotiations and sought to do so in a Houston federal court. The FTC complaint contains the usual language about protecting the U.S. consumer, but it also features allegations of retail bullying by Tempur Sealy along with 182-redactions to back that up. A discussion of that, and the usual fare of Texas-related deal summaries and the firms and lawyers involved, is in this week's CDT Roundup.
Kirkland & Ellis and Vinson & Elkins advised on the upstream/midstream deal which includes more than 300,000 acres and a 950-mile gathering system. It marks the third major upstream transaction by Houston-based EnCap Investments in the past month.
Willkie Farr advised the buyer while Sullivan & Cromwell assisted the Dallas-based seller, which Vogue once noted, "is Texas with a French accent."
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