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The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission is in its final stages of searching for a new regional director. The finalists include two current SEC officials, a former federal prosecutor and a corporate general counsel. A selection is expected by the end of August. The two front-runners are SEC Associate Director Marshall Gandy and former federal prosecutor Shamoil Shipchandler, who is now a partner at Bracewell & Giuliani in Dallas.

“There are some great candidates on the list – no bad options,” says Xerox Senior VP and Group Counsel Clay Scheitzach.

Ohio-based MPLX and its sponsor, Marathon Petroleum Corporation announced Monday their plans to purchase Denver-based master limited partnership, MarkWest Energy Partners. The companies say the transaction, which is valued at $20 billion and includes about $4 billion of debt, will create the fourth-largest MLP based on a market capitalization of $21 billion.

Ohio-based MPLX and its sponsor, Marathon Petroleum Corporation announced Monday their plans to purchase Denver-based master limited partnership, MarkWest Energy Partners. The companies say the transaction, which is valued at $20 billion and includes about $4 billion of debt, will create the fourth-largest MLP based on a market capitalization of $21 billion.

In the past week, the two Houston-based law firms have been involved in oil and gas deals that combined are worth more than $1 billion.

Exactly 1,536 days ago, a 49-year-old owner of a popular Addison pizza shop sexually assaulted an 18-year-old waitress in a nearby Addison hotel. The attacker caused the teenager to suffer severe emotional and physical anguish and gave her herpes.

Corporate mergers and acquisitions involving Texas-based companies plummeted 28 percent during the first six months of the year compared to the same period in 2014. Texas businesses participated in 357 mergers, acquisitions, divestitures and joint ventures with a total deal value of $123.3 billion in 2015, compared to 498 such deals valued at $158 billion last year, reports Mergermarket, which produced the data exclusively for The Texas Lawbook.

“Deal-making across nearly all business sectors – health care, technology, industrial, manufacturing and even restaurants – is strong and active,” said Rick Lacher, managing director of the Dallas office of investment bank Houlihan Lokey. “Everybody in our office is busy – not hair-on-fire busy like last year but very active.”

Testimony began Wednesday in the long-simmering St. Mary Cemetery dispute in which plaintiffs allege a landowner desecrated a portion of the historic African-American cemetery in rural Ellis County in order to carve out more cropland.

The Texas Supreme Court, using the state constitution and a case involving eyebrow threaders, expanded the rights of Texans to be free of “unreasonably burdensome” economic regulations. In adopting a new standard of review for measuring business regulations, lawyers involved in the case say the court delivered a ruling to match the state’s vaunted reputation as a frontier of economic freedom.