Less than one week after working until the last hour on the $7.2 billion Energy Transfer/Enable Midstream deal, Houston capital markets partner Emily Leitch has moved her practice from Jones Day to Shearman & Sterling, the firm announced Monday.
Leitch says she was drawn to the “tremendous immediate success” that Shearman has enjoyed in Texas, growing to 75-plus attorneys in just three years. She also noted she had client synergies with capital markets pro Bill Nelson, who now leads Shearman’s Texas offices.
“He can help me build and vice versa. But really, it’s the Texas story that attracted me the most,” she said.
Nelson says adding Leitch fits right into the firm’s strategy of building its capital markets and M&A practices in Texas, specifically in energy.
“We continue to see dynamic growth here in Texas,” added Nelson. “There is a strong long-term future in the Texas market and we want to be a long-term player.”
Leitch, who specializes in transactions in the energy industry, said one more quality that she liked in Shearman was how diversified the firm was. Nelson said the firm worked on more than 300 capital markets transactions last year.
“I don’t think Shearman has seen such a busy year in the last decade. We started out this year with even more deals,” said Nelson, who is currently working on 15 different IPOs.
“This is a pretty historic start to the year.”
While the energy industry experienced an especially volatile year in 2020, Leitch helped lead the Jones Day team that advised CITGO Petroleum in June in connection with a Rule 144A offering of $1.125 billion aggregate principal amount of 7% senior secured notes due 2025.
And then there was the Energy Transfer and Enable Midstream merger, a deal indicative of the trend toward consolidation in the energy space, announced last week. Leitch advised Oklahoma City-based OGE Energy, which was a 50/50 owner of Enable with Houston’s CenterPoint Energy.
Leitch expects more consolidation and more big deals in the industry moving forward as companies try to navigate the ESG market and move to more sustainable products. Nelson highlighted another big driver of deals the past year: SPACs, which he says will continue to be a major part of the capital markets in the U.S.
The addition of Leitch comes one year after Shearman added three of her Jones Day colleagues in Dallas – Alain Dermarkar, R. Scott Cohen and Bobby Cardone.