Mergers & Acquisitions

  • October 28, 2024

    Wash. AG Candidates Clash On Consumer Protection, Guns

    The candidates vying to replace Washington Attorney General Bob Ferguson, who carved out a national reputation as an antitrust champion, present starkly different visions on whether to build upon his tenure or reverse course, clashing not just on consumer protection, but also gun safety and access to reproductive care.

  • October 28, 2024

    9th Circ. Nixes Arbitration In Live Nation Ticket Sale Suit

    The Ninth Circuit affirmed Monday that Live Nation and Ticketmaster can't force consumer litigation over allegedly exorbitant ticket prices into arbitration, ruling in a published opinion that the underlying arbitration agreement linking to "borderline unintelligible" arbitral rules is unenforceable.

  • October 28, 2024

    5 Firms Guide Nearly $10B Garda World Security Deal

    London-based private equity firm BC Partners is selling its majority equity interest in Garda World Security Corp. to a group led by the security service provider's CEO, in a transaction steered by at least five law firms that values GardaWorld at CA$13.5 billion ($9.7 billion).

  • October 28, 2024

    7 Months, 11 Dissents: GOP Minority Flexes Muscles At FTC

    The Federal Trade Commission's two relatively new Republican members are starting to show how they'll use their minority position to full advantage. Sometimes they've fully signed on to the Democratic majority, other times they've dissented emphatically. And the GOP members showed something new this month when approving a dramatic overhaul to the agency's merger filing rules: forcing their colleagues to compromise.

  • October 28, 2024

    Hospital Wants NC County's 'Monopoly' Suit Tossed

    Owners of an Asheville, North Carolina, hospital accused of understaffing its emergency room and driving up wait times say the county suing them for unjust enrichment is actually trying to get paid twice for healthcare its emergency responders have already provided.

  • October 28, 2024

    Linklaters Adds 4 A&O Shearman Finance Partners In NY

    Linklaters LLP announced Monday the addition of four partners from the recently merged Allen Overy Shearman Sterling to the firm's finance division, deepening its U.S. capital markets and restructuring offerings in New York.

  • October 28, 2024

    AbbVie Paying $1.4B For Alzheimer's-Focused Biotech

    AbbVie said Monday it will acquire Aliada Therapeutics, a biotechnology company working on therapies to treat central nervous system diseases including Alzheimer's disease, for $1.4 billion in cash. 

  • October 28, 2024

    Gibson Dunn-Led Lone Star Exiting Chemicals Co. For $2.3B

    Lone Star Funds said Monday it has agreed to sell U.S. global specialty chemicals company AOC to Japan's Nippon Paint Holdings Co. for roughly $2.3 billion.

  • October 28, 2024

    Crown Settles Customer Dispute To Close $924M Revance Buy

    Revance Therapeutics has settled a distribution-related dispute with customer Teoxane SA, potentially clearing the path for its planned $924 million acquisition by skincare company Crown Laboratories. 

  • October 25, 2024

    9th Circ. Dubious Of Tesla Investors' Appeal Of $12B Trial Loss

    Ninth Circuit judges appeared skeptical Friday of Tesla investors' argument that an erroneous trial instruction improperly led a jury to reject their $12 billion claim over Elon Musk's 2018 tweets that he had "funding secured" to take the electric car giant private.

  • October 25, 2024

    Glocal, UpHealth May Settle $115M Award Feud

    Indian healthcare services platform Glocal and bankrupt digital health services company UpHealth may be on the verge of resolving their bitter dispute over an ill-fated merger that resulted in a $115 million arbitral award, Glocal has informed an Illinois federal court in a recent request to stay enforcement proceedings. 

  • October 25, 2024

    Spirit Airlines Eyes $80M In Cost Cuts Amid New Deal Rumor

    Spirit Airlines will implement layoffs as part of a plan to cut roughly $80 million in costs and has agreed to sell 23 Airbus aircraft to GA Telesis for about $519 million, disclosing the measures as the company is said to be in renewed talks to potentially sell itself to Frontier Airlines. 

  • October 25, 2024

    UK Antitrust Arm Opens Formal Probe Of $35B Software Deal

    United Kingdom antitrust authorities triggered a formal investigation Friday into Synopsys Inc.'s $35 billion acquisition of Ansys Inc., satisfied that the transaction has enough ties to the country to merit greater scrutiny.

  • October 25, 2024

    Paris Apparel Co. Valued At €505M As Permira Takes Stake

    Private equity giant Permira is taking a significant minority stake in Parisian outdoor-inspired lifestyle brand K-Way from Italian apparel giant BasicNet in an agreement that values K-Way at an enterprise value of €505 million ($545.3 million), the parties announced in a Friday statement.

  • October 25, 2024

    Frontier Urges Approval Of 'Highly Attractive' Verizon Deal

    Frontier Communications on Friday urged shareholders to support its planned $20 billion sale to Verizon, calling the $38.50 per-share price tag "highly attractive" despite mounting opposition from top investors, one of which claimed the company may be worth double that.

  • October 25, 2024

    Judge Wants More Clarity About Alex Jones Ch. 7 Asset Sales

    A Texas bankruptcy judge deferred ruling on a motion from the Chapter 7 trustee in the bankruptcy of right-wing media fabulist Alex Jones to conduct sales of certain of the estate's assets, saying he wants to know whether the parties to the case anticipate future litigation on the trustee's ability to sell the assets.

  • October 25, 2024

    Big Lots Inc. Gets OK For Oct. 30 Ch. 11 Asset Auction

    A Delaware bankruptcy judge Friday approved discount retailer Big Lots Inc.'s plans to put itself on the block next week after hearing the provider of the baseline bid for the sale had secured the financing for its $760 million offer.

  • October 25, 2024

    Taxation With Representation: Davis Polk, Skadden, Kirkland

    In this week's Taxation With Representation, Atlantic Union Bankshares Corp. absorbs Sandy Spring Bancorp, Sophos and Secureworks merge, Wendel Group takes a stake in Monroe Capital LLC, and Acuity Brands Inc. buys QSC LLC.

  • October 25, 2024

    MVP: Davis Polk & Wardwell's Oliver Smith

    Oliver Smith of Davis Polk & Wardwell's mergers and acquisitions practice was a leader on the team that advised ExxonMobil Corp. on its blockbuster $60 billion acquisition of Pioneer Natural Resources and Truist Financial Corp. on the sale of its remaining stake in Truist Insurance Holdings at a $15.5 billion enterprise value, earning him a spot as one of the 2024 Law360 M&A MVPs.

  • October 24, 2024

    Colo. Says Grocers' Execs Get Paid, No Matter The Fallout

    Colorado told a state judge Thursday that consumers bear the risk in a proposed $24.6 billion merger between Kroger Co. and Albertsons, arguing grocery executives will still get their multimillion-dollar payouts even if prices go up or stores close.

  • October 24, 2024

    FTC Official Doubts Election Will Deter Antitrust 'New Era'

    The Federal Trade Commission's Bureau of Competition director defended the agency's new guidelines and its track record during a wide-ranging discussion at the 34th annual Golden State Institute on Thursday, and he expressed confidence that whichever presidential candidate wins, a new administration won't deter this "new era" of FTC antitrust enforcement actions.

  • October 24, 2024

    Truth Social SPAC Founder Wants $1M Award For Payout Suit

    The investment sponsor of the special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, that took former President Donald Trump's Truth Social media company public has asked for a $1 million fee award for driving the Delaware Chancery Court litigation over the Trump camp's attempts to slash a SPAC deal stock conversion ratio that would have cost some preferred investors millions.

  • October 24, 2024

    FTC Probing Boeing's $4.7B Spirit Aero Takeover

    The Federal Trade Commission wants to know more about Boeing's $4.7 billion plan to take over aircraft parts maker Spirit AeroSystems before it decides whether to sign off on the transaction, new filings have revealed.

  • October 24, 2024

    Cooper Hefner's $100M Bid To Buy Playboy Brand Is Rejected

    The owner of Playboy, PLBY Group Inc., has turned down a reported $100 million offer from Cooper Hefner, the youngest son of late founder Hugh Hefner, to buy the Playboy brand, stating Thursday that the bid is too low.

  • October 24, 2024

    DOJ, DOT Launch Inquiry Into Air Travel Competition

    The U.S. departments of Justice and Transportation said Thursday that they're launching a joint inquiry into the state of competition in air travel, the latest in a run of Biden administration competition- and consumer-driven initiatives.

Expert Analysis

  • Series

    Playing Diplomacy Makes Us Better Lawyers

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    Similar to the practice of law, the rules of Diplomacy — a strategic board game set in pre-World War I Europe — are neither concise nor without ambiguity, and weekly gameplay with our colleagues has revealed the game's practical applications to our work as attorneys, say Jason Osborn and Ben Bevilacqua at Winston & Strawn.

  • Mental Health First Aid: A Brief Primer For Attorneys

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    Amid a growing body of research finding that attorneys face higher rates of mental illness than the general population, firms should consider setting up mental health first aid training programs to help lawyers assess mental health challenges in their colleagues and intervene with compassion, say psychologists Shawn Healy and Tracey Meyers.

  • John Deere Penalty Shows Importance Of M&A Due Diligence

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    The U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission's recent $10 million penalty against John Deere underscores the risks of not conducting robust preacquisition due diligence and not effectively integrating a new subsidiary into the existing compliance framework, say attorneys at Ropes & Gray.

  • 8 Issues AI Firms May Encounter As M&A Action Accelerates

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    As the AI merger climate heats up, potential complications may arise, including antitrust scrutiny, talent retention agreements, and aggressive and protective deal terms intended to compensate for lofty valuations, say Scott Schwartz and Kishan Barot at Manatt.

  • Series

    Collecting Art Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    The therapeutic aspects of appreciating and collecting art improve my legal practice by enhancing my observation skills, empathy, creativity and cultural awareness, says attorney Michael McCready.

  • Del. Dispatch: Cautionary Tales Of 2 Earnout Effort Breaches

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    The Delaware Court of Chancery's tendency to interpret earnout provisions precisely as written, highlighted in two September rulings that found buyers breached their shareholder obligations when they failed to make reasonable efforts to hit certain product development milestones, demonstrates the paramount importance of precisely wording these agreements, say attorneys at Fried Frank.

  • Building US-Japan Relationships In The M&A Market

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    The prospect of U.S.-Japanese mergers and acquisitions presents stronger competition to U.S. investors in the global M&A markets, while also opening up an additional exit route for sellers looking to offload strategic assets, says Nick Wall at A&O Shearman.

  • Litigation Inspiration: Honoring Your Learned Profession

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    About 30,000 people who took the bar exam in July will learn they passed this fall, marking a fitting time for all attorneys to remember that they are members in a specialty club of learned professionals — and the more they can keep this in mind, the more benefits they will see, says Bennett Rawicki at Hilgers Graben.

  • Opinion

    AI May Limit Key Learning Opportunities For Young Attorneys

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    The thing that’s so powerful about artificial intelligence is also what’s most scary about it — its ability to detect patterns may curtail young attorneys’ chance to practice the lower-level work of managing cases, preventing them from ever honing the pattern recognition skills that undergird creative lawyering, says Sarah Murray at Trialcraft.

  • Key Takeaways From DOJ's New Corp. Compliance Guidance

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    The U.S. Department of Justice’s updated guidance to federal prosecutors on evaluating corporate compliance programs addresses how entities manage new technology-related risks and expands on preexisting policies, providing key insights for companies about increasing regulatory expectations, say attorneys at Debevoise.

  • How Lucia, Jarkesy Could Affect Grocery Merger Challenge

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    While the Federal Trade Commission is taking a dual federal court and administrative tribunal approach to block Kroger's merger with Alberstons, Kroger's long-shot unconstitutionality claims could potentially lead to a reevaluation of the FTC's reliance on administrative processes in complex merger cases, say attorneys at Saul Ewing.

  • $200M RTX Deal Underscores Need For M&A Due Diligence

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    RTX's settlement with regulators for violating defense export regulations offers valuable compliance lessons, showcasing the perils of insufficient due diligence during mergers and acquisitions transactions along with the need to ensure remediation measures are fully implemented following noncompliance, say Thad McBride and Faith Dibble at Bass Berry.

  • Series

    Round-Canopy Parachuting Makes Me A Better Lawyer

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    Similar to the practice of law, jumping from an in-flight airplane with nothing but training and a few yards of parachute silk is a demanding and stressful endeavor, and the experience has bolstered my legal practice by enhancing my focus, teamwork skills and sense of perspective, says Thomas Salerno at Stinson.

  • Dealmaker Lessons From CFIUS' New Enforcement Webpage

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    The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States’ recently launched webpage, which details the actions — and inactions — that led to enforcement activity, provides important insights for dealmakers about filing requirements, mitigation commitments and the cost of noncompliance, say attorneys at Dechert.

  • Presidents And Precedents May Direct Khan's Future Course

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    While the Sept. 25 technical expiration of Federal Trade Commission Chair Lina Khan's term demands no immediate action, it does invite an analysis of commission policy and post-election possibilities, says Axinn's Richard Dagen, a former FTC official.

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