Texas lawyers from Latham and Kirkland worked on the deal, which the parties claim will create the largest pure-play exploration and production company in the Permian’s Delaware Basin.
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Q&A: William Turcotte, Noble Corporation
William Turcotte counts losing his father as one of the most impactful experiences in his life. “I wasn’t prepared for something like that,” Turcotte told Mark Curriden in this special Q&A. He explains what it took to rebound and how it informs his life now as GC of Noble Corp.
William Turcotte’s Big Year: Bankruptcy, Two Major Mergers, a Pandemic, Marriage and a Cowboy’s Common Sense
Growing up the son of a South Texas rancher and educator, William Turcotte learned about facing tough times, long days of manual labor and the importance of a great education. Turcotte needed those principles the past two years as the general counsel at Noble Corporation. In a matter of months, he led the offshore drilling contractor in and out of bankruptcy, eliminating $3.4 billion in bond debt. Only weeks after emerging from Chapter 11, Noble acquired Pacific Drilling. In November 2021, Turcotte and Noble were at it again, closing a $3.13 billion all-stock merger with Maersk Drilling.
“The joke was ‘You can always sleep when you’re dead,’” Turcotte told The Texas Lawbook. The Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook have named Turcotte as one of two finalists for the 2022 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for General Counsel of the Year for a Small Legal Department.
2022 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Lifetime Achievement: Archrock GC Stephanie Hildebrandt
For three decades, Stephanie Hildebrandt has been general counsel in some of the biggest and complicated civil lawsuits and M&A transactions in Texas. She’s been the GC at Archrock, a Houston-based provider of natural gas contract compression services, where she led the company’s $1 billion take-private transaction of Archrock Partners. Hildebrandt spent more than a decade as general counsel at Enterprise Products, where she supervised three huge acquisitions for the company, including the $4.4 billion merger with Oiltanking Partners, the 2011 purchase of Duncan Energy for $2.4 billion and the 2009 acquisition of Teppco Partners for $3.3 billion.
This Thursday evening, the Association of Corporate Counsel’s Houston Chapter and The Texas Lawbook are honoring Hildebrandt with the 2022 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Lifetime Achievement.
Q&A: David Stryker
Premium-Only Content: David Stryker goes into the keys to overcoming the challenges in the Starboard proxy battle and what’s next.
David Stryker’s Successfully Litigious Year
For more than four years, Huntsman Corp. and its General Counsel David Stryker fought a high-stakes legal battle over an acquisition of a company whose technology ended up not working. Stryker and Huntsman hired the law firm Kirkland & Ellis to sue for fraud and breach of contract. In 2021, Huntsman and Kirkland won, securing an arbitration victory that led to a $665 million settlement. More recently, Huntsman and Stryker secured a $94 million jury verdict in New Orleans in a separate lawsuit. Stryker’s recent wins came in quick succession, but they were the product of the deep-seated instinct for advocacy that has coursed through Stryker’ veins since the day he became a trial lawyer. The 2022 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Business Litigation of the Year goes to Stryker and the lawyers at Kirkland & Ellis.
Phillips 66 Team Used 11 p.m. Nightly Calls and Creative Legal Work to Complete $3.4B Transaction
Each night at 11 p.m. for nearly a year, Robert Task, Julie Pradel and Maine Goodfellow were on the phone discussing the problems they faced, the challenges lying ahead and the successes achieved that day. The three senior-level in-house counsel at Phillips 66 spent hundreds and hundreds of hours negotiating the terms, handling due diligence, doing the paperwork and getting the necessary approvals to push Phillips 66’s $3.4 billion acquisition of its limited partner, Phillips 66 Partners, over the finish line. Task, Pradel and Goodfellow faced multiple headwinds: stresses from the lingering pandemic, fluctuating oil and gas prices, rising interest rates, a tumultuous global economic environment and wild swings in stock prices. But they got the deal done and it is a finalist for the 2022 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Transaction of the Year.
Q&A: Alyssa Desgranges-Ellett
Premium-Only Content: Alyssa Desgranges-Ellett describes how her family history and Okinawan heritage give her strength.
Q&A: Rob Task, Julie Pradel and Maine Goodfellow
Premium-Only Content: The Phillips 66 trio share what they look for in hiring outside counsel and detail public service projects they are involved in.
Medical Informatics Associate GC Alyssa Desgranges-Ellett Helps ‘Save Lives Bit by Bit’
Alyssa Desgranges-Ellett was nine when her grandfather needed a heart transplant. She was there when doctors used an artificial heart machine to keep him alive while he waited his turn on the transplant list. “I couldn’t believe how this one piece of technology was not only keeping him alive, but vastly improved his quality of life,” she said. “All those experiences I lived through with him led me to end up where I am today, working for a healthcare-technology company that creates software to make the jobs of healthcare professionals more efficient and accurate, in order to save more lives.”
Twenty-five years later, Desgranges-Ellett is the associate general counsel and compliance officer at Medical Informatics Corp., a healthcare-technology company where she helped create and implement the company’s first contract-management system, led the company’s internal-ethics initiative and mentoring program and is designing the formal return-to-work policies and procedures. She is also a finalist for the 2022 Houston Corporate Counsel Award for Rookie of the Year.