Rick Burdick Quoted in Oil and Gas Investor on Exit Strategies

Akin Gump global energy and transactions group chair Rick Burdick spoke to Oil and Gas Investor magazine for a special supplement on private equity in the oil and gas sector. Burdick is quoted in the article “Taking Chips off the Table,” which looks at exit strategies and how private equity firms liquidate the various positions they take.

In discussing the current state of the market for investing in oil and gas assets, Burdick notes that “many offshore investors want to be involved,” which can drive the market for everyone else. Some of that, he says, “is strategic, interest in the resources themselves and some of it is driven by interest in acquiring the know-how. That is especially true of Chinese investors.”

Burdick says the industry is much more suited to acquisition and divestiture at the moment than mergers and acquisition. On the topic of exits, he adds he has seen “more events where the strategy is to sell to another PE firm. It used to be either an IPO or a sale to a strategic buyer, or even serial recapitalizations. Now there is a lot more PE-to-PE. That really makes for interesting negotiations.”