About

Number of years practice: 13 Law school attended: University of Virginia School of Law Languages spoken: English and Spanish (conversational) Principal practice areas: Energy, Infrastructure, M&A Admissions: New York, Texas

Based in the Houston office of Kirkland & Ellis, Rhett Van Syoc is an M&A expert specializing in acquisitions and exits in the energy, mining and infrastructure sectors. Primarily representing private equity firms, Van Syoc has overseen a number of billion-dollar transactions across the US and Mexico. In 2016, he was the lead partner representing Blackstone and its portfolio company Fisterra Energy in connection with the sale of its Ventika wind farm to IEnova. Ventika is Mexico’s largest wind power complex and the transaction is one of the largest renewables sales ever in Latin America. Van Syoc’s private practice knowledge is supplemented by his former experience as an in-house legal counsel. He spent a year as an M&A counsel for Trafigura, one of the world’s largest private commodity traders, which has added an extra level of business understanding to his legal advice as well as giving him the opportunity to work across Mexico, Brazil, Colombia and much of the rest of Latin America. As well as representing a number of domestic companies, Van Syoc has had a wealth of experience in global deals and strategic joint ventures. He also has significant experience in the acquisition and development of infrastructure projects in the US, Africa and Latin America. What are your predictions for change in the US-Mexico relationship? Obviously with the recent election in the US and our new President’s promises to renegotiate NAFTA, there is considerable anxiety about the future of the US-Mexico relationship. In the energy sector, I expect the level of foreign investment to be dictated not by those larger political headwinds, but rather the success of some of the initial energy investments in the sector as well as commodity pricing in the global market. Are there any aspects of the Mexican legal market that you would like to see change? With the opening up of the energy sector to foreign investment and related joint ventures, we expect that the nature of energy M&A will evolve on a fast-track and borrow many of the conventions that are customary in American energy investments.