Mergermarket: M&A Continued to Flow in Q1 2013

© 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…