Free Speech, Due Process and Trial by Jury
Few lawyers are busier these days than Sameer Mohan at Morgan Lewis. With a couple of deals announced last week, the sheer breadth of his practice is worth pondering. Claire Poole takes a look at a sample of his recent transactions, as part of the usual CDT Roundup of Texas lawyers who announced their own deals last week.
This article goes behind the scenes of a merger earlier this year involving a Richardson-based digital signage company from the vantage point of an associate.
Sure, oil and gas transactions are still a big deal in the Texas deal markets. But starting just a few years ago, other business sectors are beginning to make their presence felt in the Lone Star State. Peruse the deals in this week's CDT Roundup and note the rising role of technology. The Lawbook's Claire Poole has a few observations on the trend, along with the names of last week's dealmakers.
Harold Kleinman, a pioneer of the modern-day corporate M&A law practice in Texas, lawyer to some of the state’s biggest businesses and a founding father of Texas Access to Justice, died Friday. He was 91.
For five decades, Kleinman was a lawyer and leader at Thompson & Knight, guiding the firm through extraordinary growth and turning it into a powerhouse in the energy sector. Bar associations, community groups, Jewish organizations and businesses honored Kleinman with award after award. In fact, the State Bar of Texas and Texas Access to Justice named its top honor for commitment to the legal profession the Harold F. Kleinman Award. “I was just a lawyer who represented clients and believed everyone deserved a fair shake under the law,” Kleinman told The Texas Lawbook in 2015. The Lawbook looks at the life and career of one of the greatest corporate lawyers in Texas history.
During a down year for the capital markets practice in Texas, a handful of law firms stayed busy. None were busier than the lawyers at Baker Botts. Latham, V&E, Gibson Dunn, Hunton AK and Bracewell also had impressive showings for the first six months of 2022, according to The Texas Lawbook’s exclusive Corporate Deal Tracker, which tracks securities offerings handled by lawyers in Texas.Updated
Forty-four corporate law firms with offices in Texas reported that their lawyers in Texas played a substantive role in representing buyers, sellers, targets, conflicts committees, financial institutions and other third parties in various kinds of transactions in which assets were bought, sold or merged. A handful of elite law firms – Sidley, Kirkland, V&E, Latham, Gibson Dunn, to name a few – topped The Texas Lawbook’s exclusive Corporate Deal Tracker law firm rankings for the first half of 2022. Several Texas-headquartered corporate firms also experienced a strong six months, including Haynes and Boone, Baker Botts, Akin Gump and Locke Lord. Four law firms had Texas lawyers who worked on nearly three-quarters of all the transactions that had deal values of $500 million or more.
Energy transition attorneys are gearing up for an uptick innovation investment and M&A activity expected to be spurred by the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. The IRA, signed yesterday by President Biden, contains $369 billion of climate and clean energy provisions, as well as $60 billion for environmental justice initiatives and provides incentives for substantial investments in rural communities. Significant to the Texas economy, the new law significantly rewrites the tax incentives for renewable energy and climate change mitigation under the federal tax code.
Kastner Gravelle founding partner Ryan Gravelle wasn’t always a tech lawyer, but he says he got there as fast as he could. In this Q&A, the Austin corporate lawyer talks about the climate for startup funding and M&A for tech companies, competitors that have moved to Austin and how a potential recession will affect Austin's tech community.
There are two energy deals this week — the week's two largest deals, in fact — that are both more, and less, than they seem. While on the surface they involve the mergers of large energy corporations, they are simply simplifications of two large corporate structures. What's going on here? The Corporate Deal Tracker Roundup has the details, as well as the names of all of the Texas lawyers behind this week's deals.
The first half of the year in Texas M&A was dominated by the mid- to lower-market transactions, according to data gathered by The Texas Lawbook Corporate Deal Tracker. Although dealmaking was robust, the values of those deals declined dramatically. Of 507 deals reported by Texas lawyers, only a handful were valued at $5 billion or more, and deals valued at more than $1 billion declined dramatically from 2021. On the other hand, deals valued under $100 million help push the year's deal counts to impressive levels. The Texas Lawbook has the details.
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