Darrois Villey Maillot Brochier advises JCDecaux on the exclusive negotiations with Publicis Groupe and Médias & Régie Europe relating to the increase of JCDecaux’s shareholding in Metrobus from 33% to 100%.
Since 2005, JCDecaux has owned 33% of the share capital of Metrobus, the French leader of transportation advertising, which is the parent company of Mediagare, Mediarail, Média Transports and SMPA.
DWF LLP has advised Capita on its acquisition of Electranet, a leading supplier for the design, delivery and support of highly secure network and communication infrastructure in the UK, for a cash consideration of £37m on a cash-free, debt-free basis.
Electranet runs one of the UK's few commercial sites that is approved to hold UK government protectively marked information, allowing it to support secure government projects.
A cross-border team at Herbert Smith Freehills, spanning the firm's London, Paris and Madrid offices, has advised Photobox Group on its proposed sale to Exponent Private Equity and Electra Partners.
Photobox Group, parent of such well-known brands as PhotoBox, Moonpig, PaperShaker, Sticky9, Hofmann, Posterjack and posterXXL, is Europe’s leading digital consumer service for personalised products and gifts, with market leading positions in the UK, France, Spain and Germany.
Swiss media company Ringier AG has acquired a 60% stake in My-Store SA, Western Switzerland’s leading online outlet shop. The founders of My-Store SA will retain a minority stake of 40%. My-Store SA will be merged with DeinDeal AG, a wholly owned subsidiary of Ringier AG, in 2016.
Bär & Karrer acted as legal advisor to Ringier AG in this transaction. The Bär & Karrer team included Christoph Neeracher, Luca Jagmetti, Beda Kaufmann, Philippe Seiler (all M&A), Markus Wang (IP) and Daniel Bader (Tax).
Tele Columbus AG, the third largest German cable network operator, has announced the launch of a capital increase for the purpose of financing the major acquisitions of this year. With the proceeds of the capital increase by way of a rights offering, Tele Columbus will repay an equity bridge loan and part of a second lien facility for the PrimaCom acquisition completed in July 2015 as well as partly fund the acquisition of pepcom announced in September 2015. Tele Columbus expects gross proceeds from the offering in the amount of approximately €382.7m.
On 15 October 2015, Nantong Fujitsu Microelectronics Co., Ltd. (NFME) successfully signed the share purchase agreement with Advanced Micro Devices, Inc. (AMD), a global giant in semiconductor R&D and manufacturing. Under the agreement, NFME agrees to pay US$370 million to acquire 85% of each of AMD’s Chinese subsidiary and Malaysian subsidiary (AMD Technologies (China) Co., Ltd. in Suzhou, China, and Advanced Micro Devices Export Sdn. Bhd. in Penang, Malaysia).
Taylor Wessing advised Tech City icon Unruly on its sale to News Corp, in a deal worth up to £114m.
Unruly joins Wahanda, Prozone and Alertme amongst many others who have recently been advised by Taylor Wessing through significant liquidity events.
DLA Piper has advised Link Group on its initial public offering (IPO), the largest IPO of the year in Australia, with a market capitalisation of AU$2.3 billion as it listed on the ASX today, 27 October 2015.
Link Group is a market leading provider of technology-enabled administration solutions, with approximately 4,300 employees across 11 countries, supporting some of Australia's largest superannuation funds and the world's largest corporations.
Noerr has advised Inmarsat on a contract with Lufthansa Group to provide high-speed inflight connectivity services for passengers onboard Lufthansa’s European continental fleet. The contract, which follows a Memorandum of Understanding, formalises not only a ten year strategic partnership between Lufthansa Group and Inmarsat, but also provides a contract framework to extend the service to the other airline brands in the Group.
Noerr has advised the Swedish company QMATIC on a strategic investment in the German market. The leading provider of customer flow management systems is acquiring NetCallUp Software GmbH from Bocholt.
The company offers a software-based queue management system called NetCallUp to provide efficient management of visitor flows. The system ensures organised execution of client services in customer waiting areas. With this transaction, QMATIC has been able to enter the German market with the assistance of Noerr.
Advisors to QMATIC A.B.: Noerr LLP