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Skadden, Wachtell, Gibson Dunn and Davis Polk engineered the deal keeping Mark Zuckerberg in California with his Meta control intact, Latham & Watkins promoted 36 lawyers to partner, and Weil Gotshal ended merger talks with Willkie as it kept shedding partners to Sidley Austin and Davis Polk.
On the client side, OpenAI is closing a $30 billion round near a $1.25 trillion value with Coatue and UAE investors, the US Treasury moved to widen outbound-investment curbs on China, and SpaceX is chasing 80,000 cell sites to build a fourth wireless carrier, while Devon Energy drew takeover interest.
Now, on to what matters for your practice today.
Today’s Talking Points
-Weil Gotshal and Willkie Farr ended merger discussions
-Skadden, Wachtell, Gibson Dunn and Davis Polk structure Zuckerberg's California tax-and-control deal
-Latham promotes 36 to partner; Weil Gotshal loses more partners as merger talks continue
-Seward & Kissel bets on specialization over scale; Torridon Law expands on Pennsylvania Avenue
-Devon Energy draws takeover interest; Shell and ExxonMobil weigh an $8B Infineum sale
-OpenAI nears a $30B round at ~$1.25T; DeepSeek raises $15.9B for a Shanghai listing
-US Treasury moves to widen outbound-investment curbs on China; SpaceX eyes a fourth wireless carrier
-Private-credit group calls the fear overdone as Blackstone profit falls and Optimum readies Chapter 11
-Microsoft and Alphabet earnings, the FOMC, the UK Budget, and US midterms
Talent Strategy
Latest Moves
Hodgson Russ hired state and local tax partner Daniel Johnson in Sacramento.
Ogletree Deakins added privacy, cybersecurity and AI shareholder Anne Yarovoy Khan in San Francisco.
Munsch Hardt Kopf & Harr brought on corporate, securities and M&A partner Josh Pleitz in Dallas from Dorsey & Whitney.
Sullivan & Cromwell hired estates and personal partner Christopher Lacaria in New York.
Crowell & Moring added DOJ health care litigator Jeff McSorley as a partner in Washington, DC.
Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman hired Aaron Szabo, the Trump administration's former top air regulator, as a partner in Washington, DC.
On promotions, Latham & Watkins elevated 36 associates to partner, many in New York and four in London, a round about 10% smaller than last year that brings its 2026 partner elections to at least 58.
The counter-current runs at Weil Gotshal, which keeps losing senior lawyers to Sidley Austin and Davis Polk while it pursues a merger; securities-litigation head and management-committee member Caroline Hickey Zalka is in advanced talks to join Paul, Weiss.
What today's moves tell us: firms keep paying up for specialists in tax, privacy, health care and regulatory work even as overall hiring cools, while a run of partner departures tests whether elite-firm client relationships are institutional or portable.
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Operations and Strategy
While Weil seeks a tie up to bring confidence to the partnership, firms are running two playbooks at once: executing bespoke, high-stakes mandates for marquee clients while making very different bets on scale.
Weil Gothsal and Willkie Farr ended discussions over a possible merger. It has been reported that the discussions ended after the two sides signed an NDA.
Meta's agreement to keep Mark Zuckerberg in California and shield him from a proposed state wealth tax turned into a six-month negotiation involving Skadden, Wachtell, Gibson Dunn and Davis Polk, according to a 109-page securities filing.
Meta's special committee hired Skadden early in 2026 as a cleaner choice with few ties to the CEO, while Zuckerberg's team, later at Gibson Dunn, resisted a broad stock issuance that could dilute his control and warned he would list his Palo Alto home if no deal was reached. The term sheet was signed September 14 and the board approved it a month later, clearing a new nonvoting share class to fund Meta's AI buildout.
Seward & Kissel is taking the opposite tack from the scale chasers. New managing partner Daniel Bresler is steering the 140-lawyer New York firm toward deeper specialization in finance and transportation rather than a merger, with a cautious approach to AI and no plans to build proprietary tools. Scale and global reach have become closer to prerequisites than advantages in much of the market, which makes a deliberate bet on focus a genuine contrarian stance.
Elsewhere, Torridon Law, the firm founded by former Attorney General Bill Barr that has absorbed a string of ex-Trump officials, is expanding onto Washington's Pennsylvania Avenue. And the Justice Department's bankruptcy watchdog challenged Steptoe's bid to advise Hughes Satellite Systems in Chapter 11, citing an undisclosed connection and potential conflicts tied to parent EchoStar.
Practices
M&A and Private Equity
Dealmakers are leaning into divestitures and activist-driven breakups, a sign boards and sponsors see cleaner value in selling non-core units than in waiting out expensive financing. For corporate clients, each campaign or carve-out tends to open parallel tracks of sell-side, governance-defense and merger-control work.
Selected Press:
Devon Energy, valued around $55 billion, is under activist pressure to sell itself a year after merging with Coterra Energy, with Diamondback, ConocoPhillips, Chevron, EOG Resources and ExxonMobil floated as potential buyers.
Shell and ExxonMobil are exploring an $8 billion sale of their UK chemicals joint venture Infineum.
London Stock Exchange Group agreed to buy credit-data platform Octus from Permira for $3.5 billion in cash.
Mattel added a board director as activist investors press for a sale or restructuring.
Capital Markets and AI Finance
AI fundraising keeps setting records even as public-market appetite thins, leaving dealmakers and general counsel to manage the gap between private valuations and a stalled IPO calendar. The work is shifting toward structuring and disclosure rather than straightforward listings.
Selected Press:
OpenAI is set to close a $30 billion round led by Coatue Management and UAE investors at up to a $1.25 trillion value, while it negotiates more compute from the UAE.
DeepSeek raised about $15.9 billion in a second round at a valuation above 600 billion yuan as it prepares a Shanghai listing.
The US IPO market is described as "paralyzed" as issuers wait to see whether Anthropic's planned listing reopens the window.
Short sellers betting against data-center operators are sitting on about $6 billion in paper profits after a selloff that handed the Nasdaq its worst day since June.
Private Credit and Restructuring
The industry is pushing back on bubble talk even as restructuring files pile up, and that split is exactly where the work sits. Fund managers and lenders are leaning on counsel to defend valuations and marks while borrowers line up liability-management and workout options.
Selected Press:
The Alternative Credit Council called the fear "divorced from the market-wide reality," citing 17% asset growth to $4.1 trillion and a drop in loans needing major amendments to 10.6%, though about one in six funds reported non-accruals above 5% and KKR's Michael Small warned professional-services borrowers may be more exposed than software.
Blackstone posted a 9% drop in third-quarter profit as higher rates cut dealmaking, with private-equity realizations down about 50%, and called widening spreads a chance to capture higher returns.
Optimum Communications is preparing a Chapter 11 filing to hand control to creditors including Apollo, Oaktree and JPMorgan and restructure $26 billion of debt.
TWG Global, Mark Walter's holding company now under federal investigation, will swap $3.8 billion of affiliated assets tied to Delaware Life Insurance.
Regulatory and International Trade
Trade and competition policy keep moving to the center of the deal table, where boards now weigh export controls and market structure as heavily as price. Fresh federal action on both fronts hands counsel new mandates well before any transaction signs.
Selected Press:
The US Treasury proposed widening outbound-investment restrictions on China, Russia, North Korea, Venezuela and Cuba to cover high-bandwidth memory and other chips, all AI systems, hypersonic technology and biotech, with public comment open until December 7.
SpaceX is in talks with Crown Castle and other tower owners for access to about 80,000 cell sites to build a fourth nationwide wireless carrier, a move that would reshape competition with AT&T, Verizon and T-Mobile.
Where the Work Sits
***
Recent credit scares have tended to begin as funding and redemption problems rather than outright defaults, and today's split, a trade group calling the fear overdone while Optimum readies a Chapter 11 and Blackstone marks the cycle fits that mold. The first calls keep flowing to liability-management, creditor-rights and fund-valuation teams in New York and London.
Activist pressure and strategic divestitures are the clearest source of new deal mandates. Devon Energy's forced sale review, the Infineum carve-out and Mattel's board shake-up each open parallel tracks of sell-side M&A, governance defense and merger-control work.
The Treasury's outbound-investment proposal turns cross-border diligence into a standing compliance exercise, steering sophisticated mandates toward export-controls, CFIUS and sanctions teams as investors map which chips, AI systems and biotech deals they can still fund.
The AI financing wave keeps the high-end work in structuring and disclosure rather than plain listings, from OpenAI's private round to Meta's nonvoting-share plan, while a stalled IPO calendar leaves capital-markets teams drafting for a window yet to reopen.
Global Markets
Falling long yields and fresh energy shocks are pulling boards and sponsors in opposite directions.
Dealmakers are watching the 10-year's slide back under 5% as a possible opening to restart financings, even as decision-makers weigh French political risk, a Chinese equity slump and renewed Gulf supply shocks. In past cycles, energy spikes the market first treats as contained have a way of forcing central banks' hands, so executives are pricing both a financing window and the risk of another inflation leg.
Selected Press:
The 10-year Treasury fell back under 5% for the first time in a month on a flight to safety out of France, while global corporate credit spreads hit a 17-month high.
France is bracing for more protests, with the government planning a military presence this weekend after last week's riots.
Japan's key inflation gauge rose above the Bank of Japan's target for the first time this year, supporting a December rate hike.
US pending home sales fell to a record low and housing starts dropped 5.2%, deepening the housing freeze.
Strikes damaged seven oil tankers in the Strait of Hormuz and Houthi attacks hit Saudi airports, pushing Brent past $112 and prompting the US to pull nonessential diplomats from Saudi Arabia.
Stories to Watch
Microsoft and Alphabet report earnings Wednesday — the clearest read yet on AI capital spending and data-center demand for project-finance and real-assets teams.
FOMC meeting (next week) — the rate path with the 10-year hovering near 5% and inflation data mixed.
UK Budget — Chancellor John Healey's first budget, expected to defer the hardest choices on welfare and defense.
Treasury outbound-investment rule — open for public comment until December 7, with export-controls and CFIUS exposure for cross-border investors.
US midterms (Nov. 3) — Attorney General Todd Blanche has signaled more DOJ election suits, and investors see the vote as a risk to the AI trade.
A newly found software flaw — researchers used AI to uncover a vulnerability in software behind up to 70% of websites, setting off a global patch scramble and fresh breach-liability exposure.
That’s the rundown. See you next where law meets the markets.
-The BigLaw Markets Team
*DISCLAIMER: BigLaw Markets analyzes publicly available information, filings, press releases, and news stories published by reputable media sources to deliver content that highlights demand for legal services. Certain production processes may be supported by proprietary AI tools and are subject to human editorial judgement and review.
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