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Corp. Deal Tracker/M&A tease

CDT Roundup: 23 Deals, 21 Firms, 218 Lawyers, $4.7B

When watching the M&A markets it's easy to become fixated on billion-dollar deals. But the bread-and-butter transactions of a truly healthy market lie in the middle. Having looked at the high-end last week, the CDT Roundup this week checks out Citizens Financial's 13th annual survey of CEOs, CFOs and private equity principals which found them warming up to what they see as an economy free of the kind of headwinds that have chilled expectations in recent years. And the data suggests a surge may be in the making as 8 in 10 PE firms see themselves as stronger buyers than they were in 2023. Claire Poole has the particulars along with the usual summary of Texas-related deal activity last week.

Claire Poole

CDT Roundup: 20 Deals, 19 Firms, 372 Lawyers, $9.1B

Maybe you've already noticed, but M&A is buzzing in the first two months of 2024. But the buzz is not just in Texas. At the moment things are buzzing globally and across sectors, according to a report by LSEG Deals Intelligence. Boosted by nine megadeals ($10 billion or more), M&A transactions announced through February were valued at $522 billion, up 75 percent over the same period in 2023. This week's CDT Roundup takes a look at the fine print in that LSEG report, along with the 20 deals reported by Texas lawyers last week.

Claire Poole

Correction — Revised CDT 2023 M&A Law Firm Rankings

Last week, The Texas Lawbook published the exclusive Corporate Deal Tracker ranking of law firms whose Texas lawyers handled the most mergers, acquisitions and joint ventures in 2023. Unfortunately, we missed 65 M&A transactions done by three law firms that were submitted to the CDT at the end of the year. We accidentally recorded one transaction as a $4 million deal when it was for $4 billion. The Lawbook withdrew the article from publication as soon as we recognized our error.

Texas lawyers at 19 firms worked on 25 or more deals in 2023. Eight law firms — Akin, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher, Haynes Boone, Kirkland & Ellis, Latham & Watkins, Sidley Austin, Vinson & Elkins and White & Case — reported their lawyers in Texas worked on 50 or more transactions. Four law firms had lawyers in their Texas offices work on 100 or more M&A deals last year. The Texas attorneys at only two firms recorded total 2023 deal counts at 150 or more and deal values exceeding $150 billion. And the Austin, Dallas and Houston lawyers for a single law firm were lead or co-lead legal advisors for the buyers, sellers or targets in 140 deals — nearly twice as many as any other law firm, according to CDT data.

Mark Curriden, Christi Trammell & Allen Pusey

2023 M&A: A Statistical Elephant and a Parallax View

Texas-related M&A data for 2023 compiled from The Texas Lawbook's exclusive Corporate Deal Tracker reveals a strangely successful year — even a record year in some quarters. A record number of Texas-related deals were reported: 1,225 mergers, acquisitions, and joint ventures with an aggregate value of $739.7 billion. That's a 13.2 percent climb in deal volume over 2022 (1,082) and more than double year-over-year values ($367.1 billion).

Allen Pusey

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