On 16 August 2016, Unilever announced that it had signed an acquisition agreement with Blueair, a world leading supplier of air purification technologies and solutions. The acquisition is expected to further complement Unilever’s product portfolio, marking its entrance in the air purification business. Blueair, on the other hand, may leverage Unilever’s sustainable practices, global resources and channels to gain better development and to help more people breathe clean air and enjoy a healthy indoor environment. The deal is yet to be closed with the completion of relevant approval process.
Unilever is one of the world’s leading suppliers of food, home and personal care products with sales in over 190 countries and regions. Blueair is an air purifier brand founded in 1996 in Stockholm, Sweden, with a turnover of US$106 million in 2015. It is now a world leading brand of high-end indoor air purification systems with products sold in over 60 countries and regions including the United States, Japan, Korea, China and India.
KWM represented the Chinese shareholders of Blueair’s business in China (as the Chinese sellers) and the supplier of Blueair products in this project, providing a full range of legal services, from transaction structure analysis, transaction documents review and negotiation, tax scheme optimization, implementation of the internal reorganization plan and provision of follow-up approval support, establishment of offshore investment vehicles and equity transfer, to the determination of completion conditions. Given the complex domestic and overseas transaction scheme and payment mechanism designed for the project, KWM legal team overcame many objective difficulties in the discussions and negotiations with Unilever and Blueair, and their respective legal advisors Linklaters and Ashurst team, in which KWM team focused more on the major issues and makes utmost efforts to fight for its arguments. With a tight schedule of two months, eventually KWM team managed to accomplish the review, negotiation and revision of a dozen of domestic and overseas transaction documents and to secure more favourable and flexible transaction terms and consideration for the client, earning a high level of trust and recognition from the client. After the execution in Hong Kong on 9 August, KWM will continue to advise the Chinese shareholders on their internal reorganization, tax filing, anti-trust review and post-execution contractual obligations until the completion of the transaction.
In this project, KWM team was led by partner Wu Ye. Hong Kong partner Simon Yung and his team supported on the matters involving Hong Kong law. Partner Yin Ranran and her team also advised on the antitrust matters.
