Exclusive: Texas M&A Strong in Q1, Except Oil & Gas Upstream

© 2015 The Texas Lawbook.By Mark Curriden (April 4) – Mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures involving exploration and production companies in the previously red hot Texas oil patch took a nosedive during the first three months of 2015. While some parts of the energy industry cooled, new data shows that M&A activity in several other business sectors, including healthcare, technology, business services and retail, continued at near record highs for the first three months of the year. During the first quarter of 2015, 132 Texas-based companies bought or sold assets or merged with other businesses – a 20 percent decline from the 165 business transactions from the same time period last year, according to Mergermarket, an independent global M&A research firm that produced the data exclusively for The Texas Lawbook and The Dallas Morning News. “M&A, except for oil and gas upstream, remains very strong across nearly all business sectors,” said Rick Lacher, who is managing director of the Dallas office of investment bank Houlihan Lokey. “2014 was a record year for M&A and I don’t see any slowing down for the rest of 2015,” Lacher said. Unlike their E&P corporate cousins, oil and gas pipeline companies were clearly unaffected…