š§© Aon's reported $17B USI talks
PLUS: Apollo's $9B nonvoting check, Samsung's CHF 1.46B tender, and OpenAI's tenant warrants
August 31, 2026
Lookzy: all your daily legal news in 0.1 billable hours. Plain English coverage of deals, litigation and legal trends trusted by lawyers at Cravath, Latham, Skadden, Gunderson and elsewhere.
Welcome to Lookzy. In today's Lookzy:
Aon and KKR-backed USI are reportedly close to a $17 billion agreement
ONEOK agrees to buy Brazos; a separate $9 billion Apollo commitment would retire $5 billion of debt
Samsung sets the timetable for its CHF 1.46 billion PolyPeptide tender
NetChoice's denied injunction request goes back without a merits ruling
McDermott closes its 12-year Washington health-policy shop
THE VERDICT
Arguing today's litigation news
NetChoice's denied injunction request.
Platforms subject to Tennessee's law must verify every prospective account holder's age and get parental consent before a minor opens an account; the district court denied NetChoice's preliminary-injunction request. The majority held that NetChoice cleared the threshold irreparable-harm inquiry through unrecoverable compliance costs and, if its First Amendment theory is correct, constitutional injury, then vacated the order and sent the remaining injunction factors back without deciding the merits.
Removal after conviction.
The Second Circuit directed Judge Alvin Hellerstein to look more closely at how the Supreme Court's immunity ruling affected removal of Trump's already-decided hush-money case. He came back to the same place: paying hush money and concealing personal embarrassment were private conduct, not official acts. The denial leaves the 34-count conviction and unconditional discharge in state court, and Trump filed notice that he will appeal Hellerstein's removal ruling.
THE DEAL
Wheelin' and dealin' today's corporate news
Apollo's nonvoting $9B.
ONEOK agreed to pay $4.425 billion cash for Brazos Midstream's Permian Midland Basin gathering and processing assets; Apollo separately agreed to invest $9 billion in a nonvoting Class B interest, with funding expected in the first half of September, and ONEOK intends to use $5 billion of the proceeds to extinguish debt alongside the acquisition. Apollo is expected to collect 15% of quarterly OpCo cash flow under a 7.0% IRR cap for the first nine years, but it gets no board seat or liquidation preference and sits behind ONEOK's senior debt.
Reported Aon-USI talks.
WSJ puts Aon and KKR-backed USI close to a roughly $17 billion agreement, including debt, that could be announced Monday; neither side had announced a transaction. KKR and CDPQ paid $4.3 billion including debt for USI in 2017, before KKR invested another $1 billion-plus. The reported value is nearly four times that original purchase price.
OpenAI's tenant warrants.
WSJ reported, citing draft IPO documents, that warrants SB Energy issued OpenAI in connection with its planned data-center tenancy were worth an estimated $5.5 billion; Reuters could not independently verify that report. The report supplied neither a share count nor a strike priceāthe terms needed to test the $5.5 billion estimate against the instrument's basic economicsāand did not disclose vesting.
55.65% committed.
Samsung Biologics published the prospectus for its CHF 1.46 billion cash offer for PolyPeptide: CHF 44.31 a share, with the main offer period running September 15 to October 12. Draupnir has irrevocably committed its 55.65% stake; Samsung still needs 66ā
% on a fully diluted basis, plus regulatory approvals. O'Melveny and Schellenberg Wittmer have Samsung; Homburger has PolyPeptide.
BOILERPLATE
McDermott+ closes.
McDermott Will & Schulte is closing McDermott+ Consulting, its 12-year-old Washington healthcare lobbying and consulting shop.
Matter Research+.
BakerHostetler's new internal research tool combines the firm's enterprise data and institutional knowledge. It is the first part of a Practice Intelligence Center developed with Clio's Vincent AI.
Alright, back to billing. That's all, folks!
