© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.
By Natalie Posgate
(Feb. 9) – Last May, Simpson Thacher & Bartlett partner Chris May advised Houston-based Crestwood Equity in its $7.5 billion merger with its midstream affiliate, Crestwood Midstream Partners.
That was the smallest deal he handled last year.
In October, he led Walgreens’ $17.2 billion purchase of Rite Aid.
That still wasn’t the biggest deal he handled.
Later that same month, May worked on the mother of them all. He helped Round Rock-based Dell purchase EMC, the world’s largest data storage provider, for $67 billion. It was the largest deal handled by a Texas-based lawyer. CNBC ranked the Dell-EMC merger as the sixth largest deal in 2015.
Behind all these deals is a guy who had not even spent a significant time in Texas before he moved here three years ago from Simpson Thacher’s New York headquarters to the firm’s relatively new Houston office. Another disclaimer: May just turned 39 in November and only made partner at Simpson Thacher two years ago.
Needless to say, May is finding Texas to be a good home. He ranks No. 1 across the state in deal value by individual lawyer – and by a lot. Last year, May led $91.7 billion worth of deals, according to new data from The Texas Lawbook’s Corporate Deal Tracker.
The Corporate Deal Tracker records M&A deals and securities offerings handled by lawyers based in Texas, even if those transactions involve non-Texas-based companies.
The $91.7 billion figure does not include May’s role in representing J.P. Morgan Securities in Regency’s $18 billion merger with Energy Transfer Partners last January. J.P. Morgan served as the financial advisor to Regency’s conflicts committee.
(Editor’s Note: The Corporate Deal Tracker identifies “lead counsel” as the lawyers who represented the primary buyers and sellers and not lawyers who represented other parties involved in the transaction).
May’s high-dollar deal streak has already continued into this year. He is part of the Simpson Thacher deal team that is leading Chinese state-owned chemical giant ChemChina in its $43 billion acquisition of the Swiss agricultural company, Syngenta. Wednesday’s announced deal marks the largest foreign purchase in history by a Chinese company.
May said both the most rewarding aspect and biggest drawback of working on mega-deals is the unpredictability associated with them.
“On one hand, you’re doing exciting things that are new and challenging; on the other hand, you’re doing them on a quick timeframe in all hours of the night, but that’s what [I] like doing,” said May, who has been with Simpson Thacher since joining in 2002 out of Yale Law School.
Since moving to Houston, May says he has taken on significantly more energy work in addition to his traditional practice of general M&A.
He said there was a “learning curve” to representing energy companies in deals, but “at the end of the day, it’s one party wanting to buy a business or assets from another party.”
Like many other lawyers working in the energy M&A space, May saw plenty of deals that did not mature last year due to the strain the continuing streak of low oil prices caused on energy companies.
“As you may imagine in these times, a lot of energy deals are not getting done, but that doesn’t mean we’re not spending time on them,” May said. “I think the deals were pretty similar to what we saw in other sectors: While the dollar value was high, the actual number of deals was not as significant as it has been in the past.”
As the new year rolls into its second month, “deals continue to be large,” he added. “We’re going to see that across industries in 2016,” he said.
May’s work in 2015 mirrors two trends that the Corporate Deal Tracker reflects: 1) Texas-based lawyers are getting hired to work on some of the biggest deals across the country, or even globe, and 2) a majority of the top 15 largest deals last year occurred in the second half of the year.
May said the first point reflects one of the attributes he saw in Houston when he decided to move there.
“You have a group of advisors in Texas who are not only the best in the energy space, but trusted advisors throughout the globe,” May said. “There are a few places outside of New York where you can get the opportunity to work on these types of major, high-profile transactions, and Houston, Texas is certainly one of those places.”
On the second point, May said he has observed throughout his career a “natural cycle of the calendar” for when large deals are announced.
“I feel like the first six months of the year, people are laying groundwork for deals much more than getting them done,” he said. “These days, it takes a long time for a deal to get done. In my personal experience, it’s consistent to pick up speed at the end of the year, when holidays are associated as the big driver to get them done.”
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