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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

CDT Roundup: 23 Deals, 14 Firms, 222 Lawyers, $22.6B

We know it's routine for to push some older deals our way at the end of each quarter. Here at the CDT Roundup we sometimes imagine firms pulling out pockets and searching under seat cushions for league table qualifiers they might have missed. But sometimes in the late-arriving flotsam we find deal work worthy of mention, even though it has appeared on our doorstep a tad late. Such is the case of Justin Hoffman, a partner at Winston & Strawn in Houston, whose work leading more than a few capital markets transactions attracted our attention. We look at a few of those deals and a take in a few observations about his practice along with the usual summaries of last week's transactions and the lawyers behind them.

Claire Poole

Texas Leading Dealmakers — CDT List Names, Firms, Genders, Locations and More

Nearly 500 Texas lawyers led M&A transactions in 2023. The Texas Lawbook’s exclusive Corporate Deal Tracker has the complete list, ranking them by deal count and deal value, by law firm, city and gender. There are a few surprises, such as the number of associates who led or co-led mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures for buyers, sellers and targets. There are a few new names in the top 50, including at No. 1.

But the CDT lead dealmakers list provides some data that has become expected, including how a lot of the lead legal advisors work at only a handful of law firms or how the dealmakers in one city dominate all the other metros combined. And, of course, there is the issue of diversity — or lack thereof — of those who lead M&A transactions in Texas. This article documents the lead and co-lead Texas lawyers for buyers, sellers and targets and is the result of months of data research and reporting by Christi Trammell, Allen Pusey and Jeff Schnick. It was written by Mark Curriden.

CDT Team

Who the Hell is Kevin Henderson?

If ranking at the top of The Texas Lawbook's deal lists pisses off a few lawyers at Big Law firms in Texas, Kevin Henderson can live with that. In a way, he planned on it. He closed 30 transactions last year in an M&A space most of them wouldn't bother with, creating a space of his own with an unusual firm structured in an unusual way for an unusual market.

Allen Pusey

SLB Scoops Up ChampionX for $7.7B

Latham & Watkins was the main outside counsel advising SLB while Weil assisted ChampionX. The combination is expected to expand SLB’s presence in the less cyclical and growing production and recovery space.

Claire Poole

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CDT Roundup: 12 Deals, 8 Firms, 136 Lawyers, $9.3B

The end of Q1 this week suggests a healthy M&A market during the opening round of 2024, with deal volumes rising globally by 26 percent, with the U.S. volumes even high and topping the $400 billion value mark, according to data from Dealogic. Claire Poole examines the deals behind the data in this week's CDT Roundup and reviews the Easter week action on the Texas M&A front.

Claire Poole

CDT Roundup: 18 Deals, 17 Firms, 266 Lawyers, $5.5B

It was an unusual week for M&A, especially energy deals. Not just for the fact that there were so many of them, but for the fact that the flavor of the week was oilfield services. Claire Poole caught up with Gibson partner Gerry Spedale, who led the biggest deal reported last week for his longtime client Dril-Quip, a $1.5 billion merger agreement with Innovex Downhole Solutions. He shared a few insights on what is making energy M&A so attractive these days — and she shares her usual list of Texas-related deals.

Claire Poole

CDT Roundup: 21 Deals, 13 Firms, 186 Lawyers, $11.4B

Even with an economy that seems headed for a soft landing, there are bumps on the runway. And one of the biggest and most obvious bumps to dealmakers is in real estate — especially commercial real estate, which had problems even before Covid sent workers home. The tumble in CRE hasn't reached a crash, but a correction is coming, according to a recent report by PitchBook. The Roundup this week takes a look at the report and its relevance to Texas, where even a surge in employment hasn't managed to fill a growing number of office buildings. Those details and the usual rundown of last week's Texas-related deals.

Claire Poole & Allen Pusey

CDT Roundup: 23 Deals, 21 Firms, 218 Lawyers, $4.7B

When watching the M&A markets it's easy to become fixated on billion-dollar deals. But the bread-and-butter transactions of a truly healthy market lie in the middle. Having looked at the high-end last week, the CDT Roundup this week checks out Citizens Financial's 13th annual survey of CEOs, CFOs and private equity principals which found them warming up to what they see as an economy free of the kind of headwinds that have chilled expectations in recent years. And the data suggests a surge may be in the making as 8 in 10 PE firms see themselves as stronger buyers than they were in 2023. Claire Poole has the particulars along with the usual summary of Texas-related deal activity last week.

Claire Poole

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