Skadden and Gibson Dunn have advised US listed companies Devon Energy and Coterra Energy on one of the biggest mergers in the oil and gas industry.
The $58bn deal combines the Oklahoma City-headquartered Devon with Houston’s Coterra under the Devon Energy brand, creating ‘a premier shale operator’, according to Devon CEO Clay Gaspar.
Skadden advised Devon on the merger, fielding a team led by M&A partners Steve Gill, Mingda Zhao and Emery Choi in Houston, and Dohyun Kim and Elizabeth Gonzalez-Sussman in New York.
The firm’s New York team also includes executive compensation and benefits head Erica Schohn and fellow partner Joseph Penko, as well as Michael Hong (capital markets), Steven Messina (finance) and Trevor Allen (tax), alongside North American antitrust head David Wales in Washington DC.
Gibson Dunn look the lead for Coterra, with a team led by capital markets co-chair Hillary Holmes and M&A partner Tull Florey in Houston, as well as M&A partner Andrew Kaplan in New York.
Houston-based oil and gas co-chair Rahul Vashi and finance partner Shalla Prichard also acted on the deal, working with Dallas office co-head Krista Hanvey, who co-chairs the firm’s employee benefits and executive compensation practice, as well as Washington DC antitrust partner Joshua Lipton.
The deal has been unanimously approved by both companies and is expected to close in Q2 of this year.
The combined company will be headquartered in Houston, and together will own 746,000 acres in the Delaware Basin, an oil-rich region across West Texas and Southern New Mexico.
This deal comes two years after another major oil and gas merger, the $26bn combination of Diamondback Energy and Endeavor Energy Partners, a deal which handed roles to Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz, Paul Weiss and Vinson & Elkins.
Oil prices have fluctuated recently amid tensions between the US and Iran, with US President Donald Trump hinting at military intervention.
Since then Trump has stated that negotiations with Iran have made progress, and when markets opened on Monday, oil prices dropped by 4%.
