At first blush, the transaction sounds routine: Houston lawyer Shelton Vaughan is hired to help longtime client Quanta Services Inc. of Houston negotiate a definitive agreement to sell its telecommunications subsidiaries to Florida’s Dycom Industries Inc.
But Vaughan, a partner in Duane Morris in Houston, says the acquisition turned out to be complicated, because the deal team had to carve out Quanta’s telecom business from its other operations. He says the transaction required the lawyers to do some intercompany restructuring. “The further you get into it, you realize companies [subsidiaries] are involved in each other in ways you don’t think about,” he says in describing the challenge of separating the telecom business from Quanta’s other businesses.
