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GCs/Corp. Legal Depts.

7-Eleven’s Dawud Crooms Leads $21B Deal ‘Soup to Nuts’

It was a week ago Thursday at 11:30 p.m. Dawud Crooms' cell phone buzzed. "There's an issue holding it up," the caller told the 7-Eleven senior counsel. It was the Dallas-based convenience store chain’s $21 billion acquisition of Speedway. “It’s not an M&A if something doesn’t pop up at the last minute that threatens the whole deal,” Crooms laughs. This is the story of Crooms, a 38-year-old Morehouse alum who worked with dozens of lawyers and bankers for more than a year through a pandemic from the bedroom of his four kids to get one of the biggest M&A deals of the year completed.

Mark Curriden

Q&A: Dawud Crooms

PREMIUM CONTENT The Texas Lawbook, visited with Dawud Crooms about his mentors, pro bono and public service involvement and how he selects outside counsel.

Mark Curriden

Forterra GC and Sidley Team Take ‘Holistic Approach’ in Winning $100M Earnout Dispute

Mergers and acquisitions that end up in high-stakes litigation are often about two issues: the fine print of the transaction agreement and the intent of the buyers and sellers. No one knows this more than Forterra GC Lori Browne, who spent the past six years battling the German company that sold the water and drainage pipe maker to private equity fund Lone Star for $1.3 billion on Christmas Eve 2014. Browne won the case and the 2020 DFW Outstanding Corporate Counsel Award for Business Litigation of the Year.

Mark Curriden

Q&A: Lori Browne

FOR PREMIUM SUBSCRIBERS Forterra GC Lori Browne spent six years battling the German company that on Christmas Eve 2014 sold the water and drainage pipe maker to private equity fund Lone Star for $1.3 billion. Texas Lawbook founder Mark Curriden had the opportunity to speak with Browne about what she looks for when hiring outside counsel, how her job evolved during those six years of litigation and what personal experiences have have most impacted her life.

Mark Curriden

Southwest’s Mark Shaw: ‘Breadth of Issues the Past Year was Unimaginable’

Mark Shaw has seen a lot of crises during his 21 years as a lawyer at Southwest Airlines, but nothing like the Covid-19 pandemic. Shaw and his legal team were front and center in dealing with nearly all aspects of the pandemic. Critical were multiple securities offerings, convertible notes and federal loans and grants from the federal government that allowed Southwest to raise an extraordinary $18.5 billion in capital in a period of a few months - moves that allowed the airline to avoid drastic budget cuts.

Mark Curriden

Q&A: Mark Shaw

PREMIUM CONTENT Mark Shaw has seen his share of crises. Maybe more than his share. Mark Curriden, founder of The Texas Lawbook, grabbed an opportunity to chat with Shaw about what he looks for when hiring a law firm: what he values most in making those decisions, as well as what turns him off in working with other lawyers.

Mark Curriden

Kimberly-Clark’s Shonn Brown: ‘Using the Same System, Same Practices Yields the Same Results’

Shonn Brown was 12 years old and walking home from school when a car of white men called her the N-word and sprayed her with orange soda. Fast-forward 35 years – a Friday night last May – Brown learned that a Sonic manager threatened to call the police on her 17-year-old son and his friends – all African American – if they didn’t leave the premises.

“This is my life. This is my Black son’s life. This is our reality,” Brown wrote on Facebook. Now a year later, Brown, a highly successful commercial trial lawyer and deputy GC at Kimberly-Clark Corporation, has become one of the strongest voices for diversity and inclusion in Texas. This is her story.

Mark Curriden

Q&A: Shonn Brown

PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER CONTENT: Mark Curriden, founder of The Texas Lawbook, talked to Brown about her best day at Kimberly-Clark, steering an essential business through the pandemic and diversity in the legal profession.

Mark Curriden

Match’s Jared Sine – ‘Not your Everyday $30B Reverse Spin-off’

In the middle of Covid and locked down at home, Match Group CLO Jared Sine guided a massively complex $30 billion reverse corporate spin-off, settled a highly contentious IP lawsuit with competitor Bumble and negotiated a $1.7 billion acquisition of South Korea-based Hyperconnect.

Sine made news last month when he told U.S. Senators about anticompetitive practices of Apple and Google regarding their domination of the app platform space.

“And yes, we are fighting the two biggest and most powerful companies in the history of the world,” he said. “All in a day’s work.”

Mark Curriden

Q&A: Jared Sine

PREMIUM SUBSCRIBER CONTENT: Mark Curriden, founder of The Texas Lawbook, talked to Sine about his biggest challenges during his nearly five-year tenure at Match and his pet peeves with outside counsel.

Mark Curriden

‘It was like Lord of the Flies’

For Yuki Whitmire, it was the perfect storm, though at times it may have felt like the Bermuda Triangle. Last March, the securities and corporate transactional lawyer accepted a new job as Vistra Energy’s associate general counsel and corporate secretary with a start date in early April. In those few weeks in between, Covid-19 hit. But Whitmire, who has still never stepped inside her office at work, has done such an amazing job that she is the 2020 DFW Senior Counsel of the Year for a Mid-sized Legal Department. This is the story of her first year at Vistra.

Mark Curriden

Q&A: Yuki Whitmire

When the Covid-19 pandemic struck, PREMIUM CONTENT Vistra Energy, like nearly every company during the pandemic, sent their employees home to work remotely. At the same time one of their new hires, Yuki Whitmire was moving with her family into a new house. What happened over the next year proved remarkable, and in a special Q&A, Yuki spoke with Mark Curriden about what she learned from the experience.

Mark Curriden

Methodist’s Ashley Yen Excels in a Challenging Year for Healthcare

Ashley Yen was in kindergarten when she drew a picture of herself in the future: a stick figure of herself in a suit and glasses holding a briefcase, “I’ve always wanted to be a lawyer,” said Yen, who is associate in-house counsel and assistant vice president at Methodist Health System. She is one of the youngest and arguably the most important in-house counsel in North Texas in the battle against the Covid-19 pandemic. Because of Yen, Methodist was one of the first hospitals in DFW to administer the vaccine.

Mark Curriden

Q&A: Ashley Yen

Premium Subscriber Content From the day the Center for Disease Control issued its initial coronavirus warning for U.S. hospitals, Methodist Health System need to lean on its youngest vice president. Ashley Yen and her legal team responded, answering and engaging the plethora of legal issues and regulatory procedures critical to dealing with a global pandemic. Mark Curriden had the opportunity to discuss those challenges and a variety of other issues in a special Q&A.

Mark Curriden

GC Priya Aiyar Gives American Airlines the Legal Advantage

American Airlines GC Priya Aiyar may be the smartest lawyer in corporate America. So say lawyers and executives who watched her in action during the pandemic. She clerked for Judge Merrick Garland and Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer. She's been the GC of the U.S. Treasury and a chief legal advisor at the FCC. Every bit of those smarts were needed to address the plethora of legal issues American faced during the past year.

“Priya has no ceiling,” AA Executive VP Stephen Johnson said. “If she remains in the airline industry, the industry will experience a revolution in operations and Priya will be a key reason for that evolution. She is unlike any other lawyer who has ever worked in the airline industry.”

Mark Curriden

Q&A: Priya Aiyar

PREMIUM ONLY Priya Aiyar is general counsel at American Airlines. Like many in-house counsel she was tested by the pandemic in ways that seemed unfathomable when she took the job i 2019. But her performance at the legendary air carrier has brought praise from all quarters in the business world.

Mark Curriden, founder of The Texas Lawbook, talked to her at length about the obstacles she faced and the challenges still ahead of her. Here is a portion of that conversation.

Mark Curriden

‘Head First Into the Fire’

At 35, Ricky Torlincasi is one of the youngest GCs in the oil patch. He’s been on the job at Blackbeard Operating less than two years, but he's already helped integrate three mergers, led the acquisitions of Anadarko Basin assets from BP and ConocoPhillips’ legacy Waddell Ranch, and the divestitures of assets in Oklahoma and South Texas. Then there's the litigation he's handled.

Torlincasi's successes have him as a finalist for the 2020 DFW Outstanding Corporate Counsel’s Rookie of the Year Award.

Mark Curriden

Q&A: Ricky Torlincasi, GC Blackbeard Operating

Ricky Torlincasi has seen a lot in less than 20 months as general counsel of Blackbeard Operating. Mark Curriden, founder of The Texas Lawbook had a chance to talk with Torlincasi at length about what he's learned about himself, what he likes about in-house legal work and what he looks for in outside counsel.

Mark Curriden

Todd Barton: A ‘Steady Hand’ at Fannie Mae

Imagine a law practice in which you serviced tens of thousands of real estate transactions annually and oversaw the litigation in thousands of cases a year. Welcome to the world of Fannie Mae Deputy GC Todd Barton and his team, who provide legal support for all properties in the U.S. that are acquired by Fannie Mae in foreclosure.
How does he do it? The answer rests in the fact that Barton is the recipient of the 2020 DFW Outstanding Corporate Counsel Award for Innovation. The Texas Lawbook has his story.

Mark Curriden

Q&A: Todd Barton

FOR PREMIUM SUBSCRIBERS

Todd Barton is Deputy GC of Fannie Mae. His legal department Fannie Mae handles thousands of real estate transactions annually. As a result, important decisions come fast and furious with consequences that extend far beyond the daily grind. How does he do it? How did he learn to do it? The Lawbook's Mark Curriden had a chance to ask him.

Mark Curriden

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