Mayer Brown Deals Team Is on a Heater Despite M&A Uncertainty

Welcome back to the Big Law Business column. I’m Roy Strom, and today we look at a law firm that is defying the narrative around a sleepy deals market. Sign up for Business & Practice, a free morning newsletter from Bloomberg Law.

Mayer Brown’s dealmakers are on a hot streak.

The firm’s lawyers closed 12 deals valued at $1 billion or more in a roughly two-month span dating to last week. The transactions—for major companies including Boeing, Rocket Mortgage, and General Motors—came in an M&A market clouded by uncertainty. Each deal was led by a different partner at the firm.

“We’re not a superstar-driven practice, and we like it that way,” Bill Kucera, co-leader of Mayer Brown’s global M&A group, said in an interview. “We all have roles. It’s not a couple of rainmakers doing it all and everybody else feeding off that.”

The team recently added a new player: Daniel Serota left Sidley Austin to join Mayer Brown last month as the new co-leader of its financial services M&A practice.

The uptick is a significant boon for a practice that rarely cracks the M&A league tables. The firm’s hot streak, which kicked off in April, has Mayer hovering a Top 10 ranking by deal value on Bloomberg Law’s league tables for the second quarter to date.

Mayer Brown’s 300-lawyer deals practice has generated about $350 million in annual revenue for the firm, its leaders said. Mayer Brown had more than 1,700 lawyers and raked in just under $2 billion in revenue last year, according to data from The American Lawyer.

The streak comes at a time of heightened anxiety for dealmakers. The broad M&A narrative is that the Trump administration’s unpredictability around tariffs has forced companies to balk at making major decisions like corporate acquisitions.

Even so, first quarter deal value rose 7% from 2024. The second quarter might also show year-over-year growth, thanks in part to a handful of megadeals like the nearly $35 billion Charter Communications acquisition of Cox Communications Inc. and a $24 billion deal in which Global Payments Inc. acquired Worldpay Inc.

While the threat of tariffs weighs on the deals market, there are some positives, according to Paul Theiss, Mayer Brown’s other M&A co-leader. Businesses and private equity sponsors have significant capital to deploy. Today’s dealmakers are better at navigating valuation gaps, Theiss said, a skill he believes they honed in the M&A heyday following the Covid-19 pandemic.

“There may be a little more confidence that valuation gaps are temporary,” he said, noting that a common tactic to overcome those gaps involves higher payouts if an acquired company performs well, known as earnouts.

Kucera said the M&A market has come alive more recently as company leaders are growing more comfortable with the headwinds. The general counsel of a major client told him two weeks after the election that dealmaking was on pause for at least a couple of months, citing policy uncertainty, according to Kucera.

“Fast forward to today and I’m as busy as I’ve been in years,” Kucera said. “What I’ve come to figure out is dealmakers are embracing uncertainty. They’re saying, ‘Look, if uncertainty is the new normal, we have to figure out how to trade within the new normal.’”

Mayer Brown’s biggest deal during its streak was advising Boeing on a $10.5 billion sale of portions of its Digital Aviation Solutions business to private equity firm Thoma Bravo LP.

The firm advised Rocket Mortgage on a $9.4 billion acquisition of Mr. Cooper Group Inc., a national mortgage originator and servicer.

The firm worked on two major transactions announced last week.

Its lawyers shepherded railcar leasing company GATX Corp. in a $4.4 billion deal to acquire more than 100,000 railcars from Wells Fargo through a joint venture with Brookfield Infrastructure Partners. The firm also steered Silvus Technologies Inc., which sells mobile networking technology to military and law enforcement, in its $4.4 billion sale to Motorola Solutions.

The deals were mostly representing major corporations that are longstanding firm clients, Theiss and Kucera said, while noting Boeing was a “newer” client. Kucera, who led the GATX deal, said he worked for the Chicago-based railcar company as a first-year associate nearly 30 years ago.

“We develop these relationships, we grow them, and they turn to us for their biggest deals as trusted advisers,” Kucera said.

A handful of the companies, including Boeing, GATX, and futures brokerage R.J. O’Brien & Associates (which the firm advised in a $1 billion merger), had a link to Chicago, the city where Mayer Brown was founded and maintains a large presence. Another Chicago-founded firm, Winston & Strawn, typically better known for its litigation prowess, this week worked across from Cravath Swaine & Moore, representing Chart Industries Inc. on a $19 billion merger.

Mayer Brown’s deals also clustered in industries the firm focuses on through industry-specific deal teams, like infrastructure, financial services, technology, and food and beverage. Many firms in recent years have marketed industry-specific practices, but few have gone so far as to develop industry-targeted M&A teams.

Kucera said he’s hopeful that the deal streak will continue, noting that he kicked off another deal process this week.

“Cautious optimism is certainly the spirit of what we’re doing here,” he said.

Worth Your Time

On the DC Bar: Voting closed this week in a contentious election for DC Bar president that features Brad Bondi, whose sister is running the Justice Department under President Donald Trump. The vote featured a record turnout, Tatyana Monnay reports.

On State Attorneys General: Former Washington DC attorney general Karl Racine and his chief deputy Jason Downs told me how state AGs are picking up the slack as the Trump administration backs off some federal enforcement priorities.

On Big Law Deals: A trio of law professors argue Big Law firms have paid a steep price despite winning court cases challenging executive orders targeting law firms.

That’s it for this week! Thanks for reading and please send me your thoughts, critiques, and tips.