Omar Samji’s departure follows the recent high-profile exits of Hugh Tucker and Jeremy Kennedy who left Shearman for Haynes and Boone. Samji plans to tool his energy practice towards the rapidly-evolving transitional sectors, like decarbonization, that are gaining significant ground within the traditional oil & gas industry.
Katten’s Mark Solomon Reflects on Dallas Office’s Successes/Challenges at Five-Year Mark
In an in-depth Q&A with The Lawbook, Mark Solomon shares a few of the office’s major successes, identifies significant challenges facing the firm, surveys the lay of the land for deal activity and shares his favorite features of the new digs at PwC Tower. Plus, a windup about those damn Yankees as baseball returns.
Middle-Market M&A Opportunities Abound in Texas Despite Broader Market Uncertainty
A Katten report shows that private equity dealmakers are split on the 2023 M&A outlook but see promise in technology and other sectors.
Using ESOP, Family Foundation and Family Ownership to Successfully Transition a Family-Owned Business
There are more than 20 million family-owned businesses in the U.S. Very few family businesses successfully transition from one generation to the next. This article compares the “old technique” to the “new technique” of transitioning a family business.
CDT Roundup: 21 Deals, 12 Firms, 178 Lawyers, $18.7B
That Texas has created an increasingly diverse economy is no secret. But the CDT Roundup this week notes something surprising: that Texas added more tech workers to its workforce in 2022 than any other state. What has that to do with dealmaking? Apparently, lots. Claire Poole takes a look at the rise in Texas-led tech deals that paralleled the rise in tech workers. Or was it vice versa? That, along with a look at the week in deals and the names of the 178 lawyers who worked on them.
Ovintiv Exits Bakken for Permian in Tandem Deals with EnCap Totaling $5.1B
Gibson Dunn, Kirkland & Ellis and Vinson & Elkins counseled the various parties in the pair of agreements with a total of 70 Texas lawyers in the mix. The deal includes what Ovintiv describes as “a unique undeveloped asset” involving “some of the best rock” in the Northern Midland Basin of the Permian.
Celanese GC Lynne Puckett Led DFW’s 2022 M&A Transaction of the Year
As a CIA intelligence officer focusing on Eastern Europe in the late 1980s and early 1990s, Lynne Puckett “got a ringside seat to the dissolution of Eastern Europe as communist-controlled in 1989. It was also when she realized she wanted to go to law school.
Three decades later, Puckett is the general counsel of Celanese Corporation, an Irving-based global chemical and specialty materials company with a market cap of $12 billion. In November 2022, Puckett and her legal team closed an $11 billion acquisition of a majority ownership in DuPont’s mobility and materials business.
Citing the deal’s extraordinary complexity, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook named Puckett, her in-house legal team at Celanese and outside counsel at Baker Botts as the recipient of the 2022 DFW Corporate Counsel Award for M&A Transaction of the Year.
Energy Transfer buys EnCap’s Lotus for $1.45B
Vinson & Elkins, Sidley Austin and Shearman & Sterling advised on the cash and stock acquisition, which includes about 3,000 miles of pipeline through major areas of the Permian. After closing, Dallas-based Energy Transfer plans a new 30-mile connection with the Cushing hub in Oklahoma. Claire Poole details the deal and the names of the lawyers involved.