Paul Weiss is advising online mortgage business Rocket Companies on its $9.4bn acquisition of competitor Mr Cooper, which is being guided on the deal by Wachtell Lipton Rosen & Katz and Alabama law firm Bradley Arant Boult Cummings. 

The Paul Weiss team is led by corporate partners Laura Turano, Cristina Amodeo and Scott Barshay, who are also heading the team advising Detroit-based Rocket on its $1.75bn acquisition of digital real estate brokerage Redfin, which was announced last month. 

Meantime corporate partners Mark Veblen and Jenna Levine are heading the Wachtell team counselling Mr Cooper on the deal, which Rocket said would create a business representing one in every six mortgages in the US. 

Under the terms of the deal Mr Cooper shareholders will receive 11 Rocket shares for every Mr Cooper share they hold, representing a 35% premium on the 28 March closing price at a $143.33 per share value.

Rocket shareholders will own roughly 75% of the combined company, while Mr Cooper stockholders will own about 25%.

The deal will bring together Rocket’s real estate platform and mortgage recapture capabilities with Mr Cooper’s mortgaging servicing tech and nearly seven million clients. Rocket said the tie-up would drive higher loan volumes while providing greater recurring revenue and lowering client acquisition costs.

It added that the acquisitions of Mr Cooper and Redfin would enable it to “bring together the homeownership experience at scale”, in the process removing “the friction and complexities plaguing today’s homebuying process”.

JP Morgan Securities is acting as financial advisor to Rocket on the deal. Citigroup Global Markets is acting as financial advisor to Mr Cooper.  

The deal is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2025. 

Paul Weiss and Wachtell were both among the top 10 global M&A legal advisors in 2024 by deal value, with the former acting on deals worth £359.2bn and the latter on deals worth £240.1bn according to data from the London Stock Exchange Group.