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Competing Bills Governing College Sports Draw Unlikely Backers and Familiar Battle Lines

The ever-changing landscape of college sports left many yearning for stability. To get it, some have turned to Congress. Federal legislation could provide uniformity and finality, ending the patchwork of state regulations and settling college athletics on a fixed framework. And, depending on who you ask, it could provide an antitrust waiver — removing the gavel that has struck down a litany of NCAA rules (and empowered student athletes in the process).

But, as with all things involving Congress, there is disagreement on what that legislation should entail. The debate has pitted institutional NCAA interests against athletes’ rights groups, created unlikely bed fellows, and tested the influence of a prominent West Texas billionaire with the ear of the President.

Kimberly-Clark Buys Kenvue in $48.7B Deal that Forms Consumer Products Monolith

Kimberly-Clark Corp. said Monday that it has agreed to acquire Kenvue Inc. in a cash and stock deal that values the maker of Tylenol, which was spun off by Johnson & Johnson in 2023, at about $48.7 billion.

Kirkland & Ellis is Kimberly-Clark’s outside legal counsel and Grant McGee is the company’s general counsel. In-house lawyers for Kimberly-Clark who assisted McGee on the deal included vice president and deputy general counsel Courtney Roane on M&A activities and vice president and deputy general counsel Suzana Blades on litigation matters, as well as vice president, deputy general counsel and chief compliance officer Adam Crawford on regulatory matters.

The Sterling Group GC Joins Latham

Latham & Watkins has recruited private equity general counsel Max Klupchak. Houston office managing partner Nick Dhesi said Klupchak’s “experience with middle-market deals and the industrials and manufacturing sectors, in particular, enhances our leading private equity practice not only in Texas, but across the firm.”

UT San Antonio CLO Hailey Mullican Led ‘Historic Merger with Transformative Impact’

In September, the University of Texas San Antonio completed a merger with UT Health that legal experts agree was one of the most unique and complex deals of 2025 and will create the third-largest public research university in Texas and is expected to generate $7 billion in economic impact for San Antonio. “The merger is probably the most important decision the board of regents have made in the last 50 years,” UTSA CLO Hailey Mullican told The Texas Lawbook, pointing out that the deal was handled completely in-house. “Pretty quickly, the team realized that no one really knew how to do this. And I mean no one.”

The Association of Corporate Counsel’s San Antonio Chapter and The Lawbook are awarding the 2025 San Antonio Corporate Counsel Award for M&A Transaction of the Year to Mullican and her legal team at UT San Antonio.

Premium Subscriber Q&A: Hailey Mullican

Texas Lawbook: What are the critical factors you consider when deciding about hiring outside counsel and what are the biggest mistakes that outside counsel make in their relationship with in-house

The Art of the Complicated Deal: Dealmakers Level Up

Deals involving hundreds of millions and billions of dollars are, by their nature, complicated. But over the past two years, publicly reported deals, even as described in their regulatory releases, have grown more intricate and detailed. The reasons vary from deal to deal, but complexity has become a near constant.

Welcome to the New CDT: More Data, Deals and Dealmakers

The Corporate Deal Tracker enters a new era today with news, analysis and data that the M&A community has never seen and that has been years in the planning.

The Texas Lawbook launched the Corporate Deal Tracker in 2015 as a simple database that identified transactions — mergers, acquisitions, joint ventures and capital markets — handled by lawyers in Texas.

A decade later, The Lawbook is relaunching an expanded and enhanced version of the signature product. And the lawyers — the dealmakers themselves — remain the primary focus with the CDT.

Banking Steals Deal Spotlight This Week as Consolidation Continues

For the week ended Nov. 1, the CDT saw 20 deals come across the wires with a total value of $25.9 billion.

If you care to be really picky, that’s a drop from the 19-deal $61.5 billion stretch the week prior, and less again than the 12-deal $52 billion week at this time last year.

But that’s being really, really picky. In the eight weeks since mid-September, we’ve seen six with values over $20 billion, and two of those over $40 billion.

That and more in this edition of CDT Roundup.

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