O’Melveny Broadens Texas Push With Three-Partner Houston Office

O’Melveny & Myers is opening a Houston office, its third new Texas location since June, with three Wilkie Farr corporate partners hired from that city.

The partners, Angela Olivarez, Steven Torello and Ryan Cicero, have mergers and acquisitions, private equity, capital markets and leveraged finance experience, especially in the energy and technology sectors, O’Melveny said in a statement.

“We are fully committed to Texas,” said C. Brophy Christensen, co-chair of O’Melveny’s corporate department.

O’Melveny is among large law firms, including Kirkland & Ellis and Quinn Emanuel, that have been lured to Texas by tech companies such as Tesla Inc., Apple Inc., and Oracle Inc. The state’s lower cost of living and lower taxes compared to California’s Silicon Valley have been attractive to the companies.

The firm’s newest office brings to 47 lawyers the firm’s Texas headcount, including 20 lateral partners, O’Melveny said. The three newest partners “strengthen our successful and growing middle-market private equity practice,” Bradley J. Butwin, O’Melveny’s chair, said in the statement.

The firm last year opened offices in Austin and Dallas. Last month, the firm added capital markets partner Michelle Early, from Locke Lord’s capital markets practice, to its Austin office.

O’Melveny’s expansion strengthens its restructuring, intellectual property, litigation and infrastructure capabilities as well as life sciences and product liability offerings.

The firm said in the statement it “plans to recruit other prominent Houston lawyers in multiple practice areas, including litigation, restructuring, M&A, intellectual property, and labor.”