Energy Services Employment & Non-Compete Agreements: An Independent Sponsor's Counsel
Negotiating Employment & Non-Compete Agreements on energy services deals, with the structure protection and capital connectivity an independent sponsor actually needs.
Energy Services deals in the lower middle market run a specific playbook. Employment & Non-Compete Agreements is where the structure either holds or starts to leak.
The typical energy services platform sits at $10M to $140M EV with EBITDA in the $2.5M to $24M range. The thesis runs on regional oilfield service or renewable services consolidation. Underwrite the trough, not the peak. Capital partners will.
How Employment & Non-Compete Agreements actually gets structured.
Negotiate seller non-competes to the maximum enforceable scope, by state law.
Refresh key employee restrictive covenants pre-close, where possible.
Address the FTC non-compete rule and its state-by-state aftermath.
Tie executive non-competes to retention bonus economics that survive a quick exit.
In energy services, layer in earnout indexed to gross margin instead of revenue as part of the Employment & Non-Compete Agreements workstream.
Drafting a national-scope non-compete in California. Enforceability is a binary, not a spectrum.
"A non-compete is only as strong as the state it sits in. Draft for the state, not the deal."Jason Powell · Employment & Non-Compete Agreements
The deal is one thing. The capital that opens up after close is another.
Refinancing, recaps, growth rounds, and the right strategic conversation eighteen months early are all downstream of relationships that take years to build and minutes to use.
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Employment & Non-Compete Agreements for Energy Services, on independent sponsor terms.
Independent sponsor counsel that already speaks fluent deal-by-deal economics, structures clean LPAs, and travels with capital markets relationships for what comes after close.