Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz had a good weekend. The firm advised both Varian Medical Systems in its $16.4 billion sale to German health care group Siemens Healthineers and Marathon Petroleum Co. in its sale of convenience chain Speedway to 7-Eleven Inc. for $21 billion in the definition of a "productive weekend."

On the Varian deal, Wachtell was led by corporate partners David Karp, Ronald Chen and Viktor Sapezhnikov, antitrust partner Damien Didden, executive compensation and benefits partner David Kahan, finance partner Gregory Pessin and tax partners T. Eiko Stange and Rachel Reisberg.

Latham & Watkins advised Siemens Healthineers with a cross-border corporate team headed up by Orange County, California, and New York partner Charles Ruck, Munich partner Rainer Traugott and Silicon Valley and New York partner Joshua Dubofsky.

The sale of Speedway to 7-Eleven was led by Wachtell corporate partners Edward Herlihy, David Shapiro, David Lam, Mark Veblen and Jenna Levine, antitrust partner Nelson Fitts, executive compensation and benefits partner Jeannemarie O'Brien and Erica Bonnett, restructuring partners Eric Rosof and Gregory Pessin and tax partners Jodi Schwartz and Rachel Weisberg.

7-Eleven was advised by Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld corporate partners Tom Yang and Nicholas Houpt, tax partners Alison Chen and Jocelyn Tau, executive compensation and benefits partner Rolf Zaiss and labor and employment partner Lauren Leyden. 

The 7-Eleven/Speedway deal is the largest in sector history, according to the deal press release. 

Siemens, in an all-cash transaction, purchased all outstanding shares of Varian for $177.50 per share in cash, a premium of about 42% over the 30-day volume weighted average closing price of Varian's common stock as of July 31, 2020, the last trading day prior to the announcement of the transaction.

Varian, out of Palo Alto, California, is a cancer-focused treatment company with over 10,000 employees in 70 locations and is a leader in the radiation therapy market with over 50% market share. The buy for Siemens Healthineers was the first major growth move for the Siemen's spinoff since it was floated back in 2018.

7-Eleven's buy was also an all-cash transaction, with Marathon expecting to see $16.5 billion in after-tax proceeds from the $21 billion deal. According to a press release, the company is expected to use the influx to repay some debt as well as return capital to shareholders. 

The deal is the second-largest U.S-based acquisition this year, after Analog Devices' just-over $21 billion acquisition of competitor Maxim Integrated products in mid-July.

Wachtell, which is consistently listed at the top of M&A deal value rankings, finished the first half of 2020 ranked No. 12, according to a report issued by Refinitiv on M&A activity in the first two quarters of 2020. 

The firm is virtually never in the top 25 in number of deals (Goodwin Procter leads that category with over 300 deals through the first two quarters of 2020, far outpacing second-place Kirkland & Ellis' 193), but a small number of larger deals usually propel it into the top of the rankings in deal value. As of the end of June of this year, the firm recorded 29 deals with a value of just over $47 billion, down over 17% in value from the same point in 2019.  

The $37 billion weekend will certainly help in improving that ranking, adding roughly 44% to the firm's annual M&A haul. 

Last year, Wachtell led all firms with $644 billion in deal revenue on just 73 deals. 

Global M&A is down about 41% year over year and 25% from Q1 to Q2, with the scarcity of multibillion-dollar deals a primary driver. Deal volume is down, but only about 16% year over year. 

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