Weil represented Goldman Sachs Bank USA, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc. and JPMorgan Chase Bank in providing up to £12.2 billion bridge financing for Twenty-First Century Fox, Inc.’s acquisition of the share capital of Sky plc that is does not already own.
Kirkland & Ellis represented the eight investment banks acting as underwriters in the US$629 million global offering and listing on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange of Meitu, Inc., a leading PRC mobile Internet company. The listing, which was the largest in Hong Kong by a technology company since Alibaba’s B2B unit went public in 2007, took place on December 15, 2016.
Charles Russell Speechlys was pleased to act for Stockdale Securities on the admission of ECSC Group plc to AIM on 14 December 2016. ECSC raised £5.9 million through the issue of 8.9 million shares at 167 pence each.
ECSC is a proven provider of cyber security services that offers a comprehensive range of solutions to a wide variety of clients across a diverse range of sectors. The Company’s solid blue-chip client base includes Barclays and GCHQ.
Travers Smith has advised new client Paymentsense, the leading card processing services provider, on its £110m refinancing and equity capital restructuring with debt finance provided by CVC Credit Partners and EQT Mid-Market Credit Fund. Paymentsense provides card processing services to more than 50,000 small and medium-sized businesses and has processed in excess of £5bn transactions in the last year.
ING Real Estate Finance has solely underwritten a five year investment loan facility secured against the £198m purchase of Mulberry’s flagship store on New Bond Street by Oxford Properties, Richemont and Crown Acquisitions.
The loan, secured against the property at 47-50 New Bond Street, represents a loan to value ratio of 55 per cent and is the largest transaction on Bond Street since June 2014. ING acted as mandated lead arranger, facility agent, hedge counterparty and account bank, and is in the process of syndicating a portion of the loan financing.
Ashurst advised the financiers and the institutional investors (bondholders) in relation to the sale of Etrion Corporation's Italian solar portfolio to EF Solare Italia, a joint venture owned equally by Enel Green Power S.p.A. and Fondo Italiano per le Infrastrutture "F2i".
EF Solare Italia purchased Etrion S.p.A., which owns 60MW of Etrion’s total portfolio in Italy, for a cash consideration of approximately €73 million and the projects' debt assumption for €198 million in relation to the transaction that was completed on 12 December 2016.
Ashurst advised an international bank consortium comprising KfW IPEX-Bank, DZ BANK AG, London Branch, Landeskreditbank Baden-Württemberg - Förderbank and MUFG Securities EMEA plc. on financing the project to widen Germany's A6 motorway between the town of Wiesloch/Rauenberg and the Weinsberg junction. The financing is provided by a bond issued by the project company ViA6West GmbH & Co. KG (ViA6West), which is taken over by the banks.
On 15 December 2016, a team drawn from the Banking and Finance, Capital Markets practice and the Tax practice at Egorov Puginsky Afanasiev & Partners successfully completed their work to provide comprehensive legal support for Bank Saint Petersburg’s first mortgage asset securitisation deal, with a total value of RUB 3.7 billion.
Gide has advised Compagnie Financière du Lion (CFL), set up by French banker Arié Flack, on the 100% acquisition of Eiffage’s share in Eiffigen. Eiffigen holds, under a PPP scheme, a contract for the design, construction, financing and maintenance of the Direction Générale de la Gendarmerie Nationale headquarters in Issy-les-Moulineaux (southern Paris suburb). The acquisition of Eiffigen by a company of group CFL is an important step in its investor strategy for the French and European infrastructure asset class.
Travers Smith LLP represents Kaupthing ehf. and Jóhannes Rúnar Jóhannsson (a member of Kaupthing’s former Winding-up Committee) in a claim brought in the Commercial Court in August 2015 by Robert Tchenguiz and a related party against Kaupthing, Mr Jóhannsson, Grant Thornton UK LLP and two partners of Grant Thornton UK LLP, Stephen Akers and Hossein Hamedani.