Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Blucora Inc.’s journey last year to acquire Dallas-based competitor 1st Global Inc. for $180 million faced several obstacles. Those involved in the deal say Blucora CLO Ann Bruder's steady hand and strategic maneuvering is the reason the transformational transaction closed.
An eight year veteran of the U.S. Army, Glen Hill had no idea what public finance was. But after a decade of training in the Bracewell muni-bond practice, Hill is the assistant general counsel at Preston Hollow Capital and has “touched” more than 80 financial transactions. He’s worked on 35 deals that have closed.
Lori Browne attended her first law school class when she was seven and she immediately gave up her dream of being a rock star in favor of practicing law. Three decades later, Browne is the GC of a pipe manufacturer that employs 5,000 people, operates 85 manufacturing facilities and has a market cap of $922 million. And she's had a really big year.
Ashford Associate GC Jim Plohg played a critical role in 10 transactions, including a couple transformational deals last year for the publicly traded hospitality industry asset management firm. But you can also catch him frequently at the Eagles Canyon Raceway racing a Porsche 911 GT3 in near-bumper-to-bumper traffic at speeds of 160 MPH.
Less than two years on the job, Aundrea Holt assumed legal support for the airline's nationwide paid sick leave policy and administration, played an instrumental role in American’s nationwide sexual harassment prevention training and led the legal department's move to its new corporate headquarters, Skyview 8 .She credits her parents and two federal judges for her success.
A West Point alum, Noah Webster led Zix through a transformational acquisition and capital raise last year. But his most interesting success for the security tech business involved a URL, an Oakland artist and past due garbage collection bills. Not bad for the son of a "toilet paper salesman."
Seven years ago, Tracy Preston traded in her Levi jeans for Jimmy Choo shoes to become the GC at Neiman Marcus. Last year, she defeated a $1 billion lawsuit brought by a hedge fund, executed a complex transaction that extend the company's funded debt and played a strategic role in the opening of Neiman Marcus Hudson Yards, the company’s first store in New York City. She has more to come in 2020.
Prosperity was used to doing acquisitions, having completed 42 since its founding in 1983. But the LegacyTexas transaction was the largest in terms of sheer size and relative size to Prosperity – and came with challenges.
Pier 1 endured changes in style, changes in market, changes in judges and changes in its legal leadership to beat back stockholder charges of securities fraud in epic fashion. And as a result they are finalists for Litigation of the Year in the 2019 DFW Outstanding Corporate Counsel Awards.
But in addition to those challenges, the company is now also coping with the untimely death of its general counsel.Ashlie Alaman returned home Monday after a four day mission trip to Reynosa, Mexico, which is one of the most dangerous towns on the border. She and seven other women from their church delivered food, clothes, sewing machines to 400 migrants in a shelter hoping for asylum in the U.S. Alaman is a "force of nature" in the pro bono world. "I absolutely love being a lawyer ... to help change people’s lives,” she says.
When royalty owners sue oil and gas producers in Oklahoma, you play by Oklahoma rules. Because of those rules, the results can be ugly. But when Range Resources was sued in Oklahoma, GC David Poole decided to fight. And the results of that decision are now nominated for Litigation of the Year in the 2019 DFW Outstanding Corporate Counsel Awards.
James Sheppard took his first flight on Southwest Airlines when he was a high school freshman. Twenty-five years later, Sheppard is a senior litigation attorney for Southwest who took two major multimillion-dollar lawsuits to trial in California last year and won both of them. This is the story of how he did it.
The general counsel remained cool under pressure during Aimbridge's sale to Advent International (with outside counsel keeping the deal moving along), which helped the company go on to become the global leader in hotel management with its acquisition of Interstate.
Navin Rao led Michaels Stores through an IPO, two major acquisitions, the liquidations of its Aaron Brothers and Pat Catan’s store chains and the issuance of a $500 million senior notes offering. But did you know that Sabrina the Teenage Witch bought Rao drinks? Or that he now has a new GC job? The Texas Lawbook has the details.
Stephanie Zapata Moore has been busy the past couple years. The Vistra GC was instrumental in the company's spinoff from Energy Future Holdings. It didn't stop there. Last year, she finalized the integration of the legal and compliance functions related to the Dynegy acquisition, oversaw the purchases of Ambit Energy and Crius Energy Trust and engineered a $1 billion private securities offering. And, of course, there's the marathon she ran in Fargo, N.D.
Two lawyers - CIA operative-turned-GC Lynne Puckett and associate GC Anne Brooksher-Yen - developed a model to do pro bono projects with two different law firms that they believe will be a roadmap for their relationships with outside counsel on all legal matters going forward. At the core of these creative partnerships is identifying unique opportunities of the corporate legal department with the resources of the law firms to tackle meaningful issues.
AT&T senior counsel Belinda Boling is a pro bono ball of fire. She has handled multiple asylum cases, including a heartbreaking representation of a teenaged girl whose mother’s murdered body was found by the FBI. She recruited more than a dozen other lawyers at AT&T to help asylum-seekers with their applications. She expanded AT&T’s pro bono program to its Latin America offices and joined forces with Akin Gump to help about 2,000 U.S. military veterans get legal assistance.
Ben E. Keith Assistant GC Punam Kaji is the hands-on GC of the future. She walks her company's food distribution warehouse and rides along with sales people to catch issues before they become problems. Oh, and this is important, she actually cares about the people she works with.
Burton Brillhart won a $3.1 million trade secrets case and a copyright victory at the U.S. Supreme Court. He finalized Bain Capital's $2.5 billion acquisition of Varsity. But Brillhart's really good stories are about his grandfather, Homer Dean, a South Texas lawyer for 60 years and a close personal friend of Lyndon Baines Johnson. Dean was the Jim Wells County Attorney in 1948 when the infamous Precinct 13 ballot dispute occurred giving the U.S. Senate election to LBJ. Now that's news.
For years, Jeff Hunt piloted E-2C Hawkeye planes for the Navy, including several encounters with the Russians. Now, he's senior counsel at Raytheon Space and Airborne Systems in Dallas, where he navigates the military contractor through a labyrinth of global laws and regulations on contracts and transactions worth hundreds of millions of dollars. As The Texas Lawbook reports, Hunt also had an amazing career as a Navy JAG officer.
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