Ram Sunkara, Josh Belcher and Ronnie Dabbasi, energy M&A attorneys at Eversheds Sutherland in Houston, are headed to Holland & Knight, according to their LinkedIn pages.
A spokesperson at Holland & Knight didn’t respond to a request for comment. Each of the attorneys’ profile pages on Eversheds Sutherland’s website have already been taken down.
Sunkara, who has spent almost 15 years at his previous firm, was part of the firm’s global energy and environmental practice group. Before that, he spent almost four years at Paul Hastings and one year at Alston & Bird. He graduated from Emory University School of Law.
His last big deal was serving as co-counsel to Blue Source Sustainable Forests Co., a joint venture between Anew Climate and Oak Hill Advisors, in one of the largest private forest carbon investments in U.S. history valued at around $1.8 billion.
Sunkara also counseled Houston-based ARM Energy when it acquired Monument Pipeline from NextEra Energy Partners in April for an undisclosed sum; and Element Markets on its merger with Blue Source this past February to form an entity majority owned by TPG Rise.
Belcher, a graduate of UT and Vermont Law School, spent more than eight years at Eversheds Sutherland and just made partner recently. He also worked on the Blue Source forestry deal as well as advising Chesapeake Utilities Corp. on its purchase of Planet Found Energy Development, a developer of poultry litter management technologies, on Nov. 7 for $9.4 million.
Before that, Belcher counseled Atlantic Power on its purchase of contracted biomass plants from AltaGas Power Holdings in 2019 for $20 million and Shell on its acquisition of 43.83 percent of solar power plant developer Silicon Ranch from Partners Group in 2018 for $217 million.
Dabbasi was counsel at Eversheds Sutherland and is being minted a partner with the move. The University of Texas School of Law graduate started his career at Clifford Chance, served as general counsel of a San Francisco-based startup called Webcabby and practiced at a couple of law firms in Dubai prior to joining Eversheds Sutherland in 2018.
He also worked on the Blue Source forestry deal with Sunkara and Belcher and teamed up with Sunkara on Element Market’s merger with Blue Source in February.