© 2013 The Texas Lawbook.
By Mark Curriden
Senior Writer for The Texas Lawbook
Five of the 10 largest corporate mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures announced in the U.S. during the first quarter of 2013 involved Texas-based companies.
That means M&A lawyers at the state’s largest law firms stayed busy.
Vinson & Elkins, Akin Gump, Andrews Kurth and Bracewell & Giuliani were the Texas-based law firms that appear to have had the best quarter, according to new data released by mergermarket, an independent global research firm associated with the Financial Times.
Global law firms with significant corporate transactional practices, including Jones Day, Weil, Gotshal & Manges, Latham & Watkins, DLA Piper, K&L Gates and Sidley Austin, also ranked in the top 15 firms in the South, which ranges from Florida and Georgia to Texas.
The two chart leaders – Wachtell, Lipton Rosen & Katz for deal value and Kirkland & Ellis for deal count – don’t even have an office in Texas, although Kirkland has eyed moving to Dallas or Houston for the past year.
“Texas law firms face what their Texas business clients have faced for the past decade,” says Chad Watt, a Texas-based analyst and writer for mergermarket. “The business climate is so good in Texas, especially for oil and gas, that non-Texas firms continue to want to get their share of the work.
“These outside firms have found that Texas businesses are open to hiring them, especially in the larger, global deals,” says Watt.
The largest deal announced during the first quarter was Dell Inc.’s proposed $20 million sale to Silver Lake Partners and Michael Dell. However, no Texas law firms are reportedly involved in that transaction, which is being challenged by some shareholders and could be in trouble.
AMR Corp.’s $5 billion merger with US Airways, Kinder Morgan Energy’s $4.2 billion acquisition of Copano Energy, LINN Energy’s $4.1 billion purchase of Berry Petroleum, and Energy Transfer Partners’ $3.7 billion restructuring with ETP Holdco have kept corporate lawyers hip-deep in transactional work.
Watt says the data shows that the first quarter of 2013 produced more deals and larger deals than during the first quarter of 2012, but that it was significantly less than the fourth quarter of 2012.
“There was a big rush at the end of 2012 to get deals announced and done – some of it because of potential tax code changes,” he says.
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