Driven by a mix of private equity interest, family office investments and strategic consolidations across multiple sectors, dealmaking was strong in 2024, particularly in Texas, revealing resilience even as the year closed amid tightening credit and unexpected headwinds.
Two lawyers stood out in that Texas M&A landscape, each making their mark in distinct ways, according to exclusive data from The Texas Lawbook’s Corporate Deal Tracker.
Gibson Dunn’s Michael Piazza, led all Texas lawyers in deal count. In 2024, he worked on 30 transactions, including three billion-dollar deals, which he either led or co-led. Simpson Thacher’s Shamus Crosby, led all Texas lawyers in deal value. Last year, he delivered 11 deals priced at $64.5 billion, a little over $7 billion more than the lawyer in second place: his colleague Breen Haire — including a $50 billion data center blockbuster, the largest Texas-related deal of the year.
Piazza, a partner and co-head of Gibson Dunn’s U.S. PE and GP practice in Houston, and Crosby, a partner in Simpson Thacher’s Houston office specializing in M&A, JVs and structured financing transactions, aren’t strangers as they have sat opposite one another several times in their careers and worked together for over a year at Bracewell.
The Lawbook recently took time with each of them to discuss their 2024 accomplishments, their work on headline-grabbing deals, Texas’ continued prominence as a hub for M&A activity and what’s keeping them busy so far this year.
The following interviews have been edited for length and clarity.
On being a top dealmaker last year …
Michael Piazza: I am both honored and humbled. I am very grateful to our clients for their confidence and to my Gibson Dunn team, which did such superb work successfully closing these deals. 2024 was an excellent year. It is a testament to the sterling work of so many at Gibson Dunn and the market-leading platform we have built and continue to grow in Texas.
Shamus Crosby: What an honor. We knew we were having an incredible year as an office last year, but seeing the data prove what we are accomplishing at Simpson Thacher’s Houston office is really rewarding. We were ranked third for both Texas-related M&A deals and Texas-led M&A deals based on deal value with only four current M&A partners. We averaged above five announced transactions per partner, which I suspect is at or near the top of the heap on a per-partner basis. The sophistication of our group and the quality of our clients allow us to punch well above our relative size, and we are having a lot of fun doing it.
How deal flow looked to them in 2024 …
Piazza: It was a very active year for me across several sectors. The energy space saw robust M&A and JV activity and an increase in private equity investment year over year. The activity level in the asset management space, including GP Stakes, strategic partnerships, and M&A, was exceptionally strong.
Crosby: Data centers and the energy to power them have been big activity drivers over the last 12 to 18 months. A large portion of my time was spent either on data center-specific transactions or on energy transactions centered around the data center theme. We’ve also seen a lot of activity in the fiber sector. The large communications providers are all seeking to get involved in the buildout of broadband fiber networks to their retail customers, and our private equity clients have been very active in providing capital for those buildouts.
Which deals stood out for them…
Piazza: I led a deal for Andros Capital Partners on both the M&A transaction and the partnership negotiations. Andros was a lead investor in a Quantum-sponsored continuation fund for its portfolio company, HG Energy. At $1.6 billion, this transaction represents one of the larger E&P continuation funds raised in recent years. The interest of energy private equity sponsors in continuation funds has been a growing trend over the past few years.
Also, private equity investment in the wealth management industry has skyrocketed, and I have been working with a number of investors in the space, including Constellation Wealth Capital, a private equity firm based in Chicago that focuses on strategic investments in wealth management firms. I represented Constellation in a number of strategic investments in wealth management firms across the United States in 2024.
M&A activity across the asset management industry remains red hot, and Gibson Dunn is a market leader in the space. In 2024, I also represented IPI Partners, a digital infrastructure fund manager with approximately $10.5 billion AUM, in its sale to Blue Owl Capital Inc. for approximately $1 billion.
Crosby: Breen Haire and I led KKR in its $50 billion strategic partnership with ECP, which was not only significant because of its size, but also in that it brought together two of the best in the business at investing in digital infrastructure and energy to solve generational issues posed by the proliferation of AI and growing energy demand. It was really exciting to be involved and I’m looking forward to seeing what the very talented people at KKR and ECP do going forward.
I also led KKR’s joint venture with T-Mobile to acquire Metronet alongside Breen Haire. The complexity level of the deal was as high as I could ask for, and we also had an added layer of complexity from Hurricane Beryl. Even with many of us without power and/or displaced from our homes, we were able to deliver for our client. Our team’s effort was amazing, and guiding KKR through a hugely important transaction was very rewarding. Gabriel Silva (New York) and I represented DigitalBridge in Vantage Data Center’s $9.2 billion recapitalization by DigitalBridge and DataBank in a $2 billion capital raise. These and similar marquee deals in the data center space were a huge activity driver for our infrastructure and real estate groups last year.
How 2025 is looking so far …
Piazza: The year is off to a slower start than I had expected, but I ultimately expect activity levels to be comparable to those of 2024. I have been representing my long-standing client, Juniper Capital, in connection with its merger of multiple Juniper portfolio companies with Amplify Energy Corp. I also recently represented AMG, a publicly traded company with over $708 billion AUM, in its strategic minority investment in NorthBridge, a private markets manager specializing in industrial logistics real estate assets.
I am working on a number of other transactions, the details of which I am unable to disclose at this time, but assuming they go forward, it will make for a very busy 2025.In terms of the deal pipeline, I am working on multiple exits for energy private equity sponsors that are in the early stages, and we have a number of buy-side energy mandates. The GP stakes market remains red hot, and a number of GP stakes transactions, both on the investor and sponsor side, are in the works.
Crosby: In early January, we signed an agreement for KKR to acquire an interest in AEP’s Ohio, Indiana and Michigan transmission companies for $2.82 billion. This was an important investment for KKR’s infrastructure platform in a U.S. utility investment, and we are so proud to have played a part in it.
While I haven’t announced any other deals yet in 2025, we expect our busiest year ever. This is largely due to an expected surge in activity across sectors in the infrastructure space, including fiber, transportation, renewables, LNG and power. I also expect the data center space to remain active, operators will continue to raise capital and we are seeing more and more projects aimed at solving the power-supply problem.