Taylor Wessing has advised FDM Group (Holdings) plc, the international provider of professional IT and business services, around the successful pricing of its initial public offering of shares to the premium segment of the Official List of the Financial Conduct Authority and for trading on the main market of the London Stock Exchange.

Based on the offer price, the market capitalisation of FDM will be approximately £308.5 million, making it the UK's largest listed IT services provider.

King & Wood Mallesons advised the shareholders of Hong-Kong company Aldiko on its sale to Feedbooks. Founded in 2009, Aldiko develops an Android eBook reader application with more than 20 million users world-wide.

Established in 2007, the French start-up Feedbooks is an eBook retailer which provides more than 800,000 publications to a world-wide audience.

International law firm, Osborne Clarke has advised the shareholders of Precise Media, including UK private equity house Phoenix Equity Partners, on the sale of a majority stake in the company to WPP’s research arm, Kantar.

The Firm is representing Alibaba Group Holding Limited, China’s largest e-commerce company, in connection with its buyout of UCWeb Inc., China’s leading mobile browser company.  Alibaba, which already owned 66% of UCWeb, acquired the rest of the shares of UCWeb in this transaction for an undisclosed amount with cash and Alibaba shares.

The Simpson Thacher team working on this deal includes Katie Sudol, Wei Li and Matthew Schwartz (M&A).

A team based in the Budapest office of international law firm Weil, Gotshal & Manges advised the TDF Group of France on the sale of Antenna Hungária Zrt. to NISZ (National Infocommunications Services Co. Zrt.), a Hungarian state-owned company providing governmental information and telecommunication operations and services.

Rotherham-based specialist equipment testing business has been acquired by US based MISTRAS Group (NYSE: MG) in an undisclosed deal.  Irwin Mitchell’s Corporate Team In Sheffield Advises On Deal
 
Established in 1993 with a strong presence in Aberdeen and Netherlands and led by managing director, David Ackernley, Focus NDT performed non-destructive testing and inspection activities for industries across a comprehensive range of sectors including Oil and Gas, Defence, precision engineering and Aerospace.

Olswang has advised CityFibre Infrastructure Holdings PLC, a leading owner and operator of fibre optic infrastructure, on an oversubscribed placing of 42,857,142 shares, raising £30.0 million in total (before expenses).

Olswang also assisted CityFibre with the implementation of a new suite of share incentives.

RPC has acted for DMG Media, the consumer media arm of the Daily Mail and General Trust plc (DGMT), on the sale of its job board business, Jobsite to StepStone, an Axel Springer business.  Deal sees the sale of Jobsite and completes the divestment of the Evenbase portfolio

WilmerHale is representing its longtime client Analog Devices, Inc., a global leader in high-performance semiconductors for signal processing applications, in its proposed acquisition of Hittite Microwave Corporation, a designer and manufacturer of high performance integrated circuits, modules, subsystems and instrumentation for RF, microwave and millimeter wave applications, in a cash tender offer for approximately $2.5 billion in total equity value.

Herbert Smith Freehills Paris LLP advised the Korean company CSLI Co. Ltd, on its acquisition of French company SYSTRAN, one of the world's leading providers of machine translation technology.

Systran's management and principal shareholders began exclusive negotiations with CSLI Co. Ltd on 18 December 2013 for the sale of all of their shares in Systran (namely all existing shares and any new shares obtained through the exercise of their share subscription options), representing around 38.04% of the company's capital, to CSLI Co. Ltd at a price of €5 per share.