National law firm Shoosmiths has teamed up with DCLM Commercial Property to help clinch a £110m deal for the public house giant, Marston's.

Shoosmiths' real estate team provided legal advice to long-standing client Marston's on an innovative sale and leaseback transaction of 45 public houses.

Shoosmiths' Vaqas Farooq and Lisa On-Iam led a cross-office team of nine real estate specialists from Manchester, Birmingham and Edinburgh on the multi-million pound transaction.

Herbert Smith Freehills has advised Leighton Properties on securing a major tenant pre-commitment and pre-sales in Kings Square, Perth, WA, in what will be the largest commercial property pre-sale in Western Australia.

Leading international legal practice, Norton Rose has advised Santander, one of the world’s largest banks, on the disposal of its UK co-branded store card business to SAV Credit, an independent credit card provider owned by US hedge fund Varde Partners.

Santander’s UK store card business has approximately 3.5 million customer accounts and £1 billion in receivables and provides co-branded store cards for retailers such as Debenhams, House of Fraser, Arcadia (which includes Topman and Topshop) and Laura Ashley.

Herbert Smith Freehills has advised Moly Mines Limited on its proposed mine gate sale for iron ore produced at the Company’s Spinifex Ridge Iron Ore Mine with Mineral Resources Limited.

Moly Metals Australia Pty Ltd, a wholly owned subsidiary to Moly Mines, will sell ore from the Spinifex Ridge Iron Ore Mine to Mineral Resources at the mine gate. The transaction is subject to approval of Moly’s shareholders at an extraordinary general meeting to be held in June 2013.

Ashurst has advised McGrathNicol as receivers of Banksia Securities Limited (Banksia), on the A$238.8 million Banksia loan portfolio sale to Deutsche Bank.

Debenture issuer Banksia, a rural lender which operated mostly in Victoria, was placed in receivership in October 2012. The receivers conducted a sale process of a performing loan portfolio originated by Banksia, valued at A$238.8 million.

Simmons & Simmons Advises FTSE-listed Ukrainian oil & gas company on asset disposal

International law firm Simmons & Simmons has advised new client Cadogan Petroleum Holdings Ltd. on its disposal of two gas processing plants to Global Process Systems LLC.

The disposal marked the closure of litigation between the two parties and a full and final settlement of all claims and liabilities between them. The transaction completed on 19 April 2013.

The Economist Group has announced the sale of its European Voice business to Selectcom Finance, owner of the Development institute international group.

Macfarlanes acted for The Economist and lead partner James Dawson said, "We are very happy to have helped The Economist find a good home for this asset which it has owned since 1995. The deal was particularly interesting because it was a sale of an essentially Belgian asset to a French company and we were able to pull the various elements together."

Slaughter and May advised Maersk FPSOs on a sale of the Maersk Curlew, a floating, production, storage and offloading vessel, located in the Central North Sea, to Shell.

The transaction completed on 19 April 2013. It follows the successful sale by Maersk of the Maersk Peregrino vessel to Statoil and Sinochem in 2012, a transaction on which Slaughter and May also advised.

Contacts

Leading international law practice, Norton Rose has advised Future plc on the sale of its music listening business for £10.2 million to Team Rock Limited (a Company controlled by Harwood Private Equity).

Future plc is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a leading publisher of specialist interest magazine titles. The titles being sold include the market leading guitar rock titles “Classic Rock”, “Metal Hammer” and the leading rock award “Golden Gods”.

Speechly Bircham has advised Peppercoast Petroleum Plc on the sale of its 100% interest in the Production Sharing Contract (PSC) relating to Block LB-13 offshore Liberia to a subsidiary of Canadian Overseas Petroleum (COPL) for a sum of US$83.5 million The transaction completed on 5 April 2013, following the ratification of an amended and restated PSC by the Liberian Legislature. Contracts were originally exchanged in 2011 and the last 2 years have seen significant efforts from all parties to reach completion.