Through the first half of 2014, Baker Botts lawyers have advised clients on more than 38 major merger & acquisition transactions (including spin-offs) valued in excess of $56.6 billion.

The firm’s M&A activity for the first half of the year is up more than 163% ($35.1 billion) compared to the first half of 2013 when the firm worked on transactions totaling $21.5 billion.

Baker Botts lawyers represented clients in a number of notable transactions over the past six months, including:

• Liberty Media Corporation in its offer to acquire all outstanding shares of Sirius XM Holdings, Inc. not already owned by Liberty, which would make Sirius a wholly owned subsidiary of Liberty. The transaction is led by New York partners Buzz McGrath and Renee Wilm.
• Sallie Mae (formally SLM Corporation) in the $7.1 billion spin-off of Navient, its loan management, servicing and asset recovery business. The transaction is led by Palo Alto partner John Martin, New York partner Robert Murray and Dallas partners Brian Henchey and Courtney York.
• Chesapeake Energy Corporation in the announced $2.2 billion spin-off of its oilfield services business to create a new publicly traded company, Seventy Seven Energy. The transaction is led by Houston partner Hillary Holmes.
• Kraton Performance Polymers, Inc. in the $2 billion combination with the styrenic block copolymer (“SBC”) operations of LCY Chemical Corp. The transaction is led by Houston partner Stephen Massad.

David Kirkland

“The firm’s activity in merger and acquisition transactions has been strong for the start of this year, and we expect to see the trend continuing into the second half of the year,” said David Kirkland, chair of Baker Botts’ Corporate Practice. “Energy and media deals have been particularly strong. Transaction structures ranging from spin-offs that form pure plays to joint ventures that allow parties to combine similar businesses while retaining an ownership stake are supplementing the traditional public company M&A deals.”

Additional information about the firm’s mergers and acquisitions practice is available here.