A “snag” in North Texas-based residential lender United Development Funding’s business model caused the firm to careen off the path of profitability, and the company’s executives then launched an illegal scheme to try to recover and to enrich themselves, a federal prosecutor told jurors in opening statements of a white-collar trial in Fort Worth. The Dallas Business Journal is providing continuous coverage of the trial.
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Two Final DFW Corporate Counsel Awards Finalists/Winners
The Association of Corporate Counsel’s DFW Chapter and The Texas Lawbook announce the finalists for the last two 2021 DFW Corporate Counsel Awards categories: GC of the Year for a Midsized Legal Department and Senior Counsel of the Year for a Small Legal Department. In-house counsel at Pizza Hut and City Electric Supply are the winners.
Longtime ERCOT Lawyer Joins Austin Office of Baker Botts
Juliana Morehead Sersen, who spent 12 years with the entity that manages the Texas electric grid, says she’s still sorting out what role, if any, she will play in Baker Bott’s cases stemming from last February’s deadly winter storm.
Desert Peak, Falcon to Combine in $1.9B Merger
Four law firms in Texas advised the various parties on the deal, which is expected to create a top mineral and royalty company with low leverage, an emphasis on shareholder returns and a big footprint in the Permian Basin and Eagle Ford.
Kirkland Adds IP Litigator in Austin
Kat Li now is the seventh Texas-based lawyer in Kirkland’s growing intellectual property practice group. She joins from McKool Smith.
DBJ: UDF Securities Fraud Trial Begins Today
Six years after the FBI stormed the offices of United Development Funding in Grapevine, CEO Hollis Greenlaw and three other controlling executives of the firm are in trial this morning on fraud and conspiracy charges in federal court in Fort Worth. The allegations, which the executives deny, involve dollar figures high enough to rank it among the nation’s largest financial fraud cases. The Dallas Business Journal is there for the trial and will have continuous coverage.
Siva Barnwell Adams Led Chevron Through Covid Gauntlet to Close Noble Deal
Chevron senior counsel Siva Barnwell Adams worked mornings, nights and weekends in 2020 as the top lawyer representing the energy giant in its $13 billion acquisition of Noble Energy, which was the largest oil and gas transaction during the first year of the Covid-19 pandemic. Her inspiration to give it her all came 37 years earlier, when she was working part-time at Arby’s and faced an angry Clear Lake High School track coach. “Today, when I think of giving 100%, I think of her.”
Q&A: Siva Barnwell Adams
Premium-Only Content:She likes a good story, as long as it’s a short one. She plays Texas “Hold ‘Em” on a regular basis. There’s a lot to know about Siva Barnwell Adams and her work, so The Lawbook’s Mark Curriden asked.
CDT Roundup: 13 Deals, 11 Firms, 102 Lawyers, $8.3B
The oil & gas sector may have lost cachet, but its importance to Texas is enduring. And projections for investment in O&G and LNG show that 2022 isn’t going to change that. That and the lawyers who moved last week’s deals in the CDT Roundup.
Capital Markets Will Power the Energy Evolution
The world is embarking on what may be one of the greatest transformations since the Industrial Revolution, and it is a good bet Texas will have a role to play.