Osborne Clarke has advised Panmure Gordon and Arden Partners in their capacity as joint bookrunners in connection with Eclectic Bar Group plc's £18 million conditional acquisition of the company behind Brighton Pier. The acquisition, which will result in a reverse takeover of Eclectic, is being financed through a £8.5 million placing and new bank debt from Barclays.

The Osborne Clarke team was led by ECM Partner Jonathan King, assisted by Senior Associate Jake Turcan.

Dentons has successfully completed a sale for Minmetco Limited (Minmetco) on the company's 75 per cent majority interest in Metdist Trading Limited, the UK metals trading firm, to CCB International Securities Limited (CCB). The sale was completed on 6 April 2016.  Upon completion Metdist Trading Limited has been renamed CCBI Metdist Global Commodities (UK) Limited (CCBI Metdist).

Slaughter and May advised Union Bancaire Privée, UBP SA (UBP) on the corporate and regulatory aspects of its acquisition of the Hong Kong banking and wealth management business of Coutts & Co. AG (Coutts) from The Royal Bank of Scotland plc.

The acquisition involved an asset purchase of Coutts’ Hong Kong business. In order to take over Coutts’ banking business in Hong Kong, UBP obtained a banking licence from the Hong Kong Monetary Authority and a registered institution licence from the Securities and Futures Commission.

General Electric (GE) is selling off its financial operations in German and France. The French Banque Fédérative du Crédit Mutuel will be taking over GE’s Equipment Financing and Factoring divisions. The purchase agreement was signed on 31 March. Closing of the transaction is still subject to approval of the French and German financial supervisory authorities and European banking regulators.

Simpson Thacher represents KKR in its proposed sale of SMCP, a French fashion group operating under the Sandro, Maje and Claudie Pierlot brands. On March 31, 2016, KKR announced the signing of an exclusivity agreement with Shandong Ruyi Technology Group in relation to the sale. The transaction remains subject to works council consultation and regulatory approvals. Following the sale, KKR is expected to retain a minority interest in SMCP.

Shearman & Sterling represented the underwriters, led by RBS Securities, in connection with The Royal Bank of Scotland's $1.5 billion senior notes offering. The bond pays an interest rate of 4.800% due in 2026. The joint bookrunners included Morgan Stanley, Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Credit Suisse.

The Royal Bank of Scotland is headquartered in Edinburgh, has a diversified customer base and provides a wide range of products and services to personal, commercial and large corporate and institutional customers.

Shearman & Sterling advised BNP Paribas as arranger, initial lender and agent on the acquisition financing of a €158 million retail park in the Paris region by Assurances du Crédit Mutuel Vie, Crédit Agricole Assurances and Frey.

The Shearman & Sterling team was led by partner Pierre-Nicolas Ferrand, assisted by counsel Philippe Wolanski and associate Bruno Valenti (all Paris-Finance).

The law firm PLMJ assisted Barclays in the sale of its business in Portugal to the Spanish bank Bankinter and this complex operation took around one year to be completed and that was coordinated by Hugo Nunes e Sá, Banking and Finance Senior Associate. The whole of Barclays’ retail and wealth business and part of its corporate banking business were transferred to Bankinter, which begins operations in Portugal as from today.

As part of its comprehensive corporate restructuring, Residual Debt Services Limited (formerly known as African Bank Limited (in curatorship)) has successfully completed its voluntary exchange offer launched on 4 February 2016 to various classes of its creditors. In the context of the exchange offer, senior creditors exchanged their existing debt for corresponding instruments newly issued by the new African Bank Limited.

International law firm Watson Farley & Williams (“WFW”) advised Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank (“CA-CIB”) as Agent on the export credit agency backed US$216 million post-delivery financing to a subsidiary of BW Gas, who were advised by Stephenson Harwood, in relation to the state-of-the-art floating storage and regasification unit (“FSRU”) vessel, BW Singapore, which has storage capacity in excess of 170,000 cubic metres and a peak regasification capacity of 750 million standard cubic feet per day.