Texas Financial Advisers: M&A Activity will Surge in Q4

© 2016 The Texas Lawbook.By Kerry Curry (July 26) – Merger-and-acquisition activity crawled along during the first half of 2016, but leading financial advisers in Texas predict an acceleration of deal flow and size before the end of year. Financial advisers from KPMG, Tudor Pickering Holt, Grant Thornton and Anderson King Energy say they expect private equity firms and traditional investors in the oil patch to return to the deal market later after sitting on the sidelines for the past 18 months. “Texas has the most valuable oil & gas real estate on the planet,” says Maynard Holt, co-president and co-head of investment banking at Tudor Pickering Holt & Co., an energy investment and merchant banking firm in Houston. “It is to oil and gas what Manhattan is to the real estate market.” The nation’s most prolific oil play, the Permian Basin in West Texas, remains a hot commodity, despite oil prices being far lower than they were two years ago. Yet the basin is getting attractive valuations that Jon Dormer, managing partner at Dallas-based Anderson King Energy Consultants, calls “a little bit surprising given where commodity prices are, but it just shows you the quality and the future inventory…