Watson Farley & Williams has advised the Tank & Rast group (“Tank & Rast”), a leading provider of German motorway service areas, on the conclusion of a five-year agreement aimed at considerably expanding the existing cooperation between McDonald’s Deutschland and Autobahn Tank & Rast GmbH by opening more than 100 new McDonald’s restaurants in suitable locations along the motorway network.
Allen & Overy is advising VimpelCom, parent company of WIND, on its agreement to form a 50/50 joint venture with CK Hutchison Holdings Limited (CK Hutchison), parent company of Italian mobile operator 3 Italia.
The joint venture combines Italy’s third and fourth largest telecommunications companies to create the number one operator in Italy for mobile customers. By combining the two businesses the enlarged company will have more than 31 million customers and will deliver significant synergies of more than EUR5 billion.
Slaughter and May is advising Shire on its proposed combination with Baxalta. Shire's proposal of an all-stock combination of 0.1687 Shire ADRs for each Baxalta share represents a total enterprise value for Baxalta of US$33.9 billion.
Under the terms of the proposed transaction, Baxalta shareholders would own approximately 37% of the combined Shire group. Promptly after the proposed combination completed, Shire would initiate a share buy-back programme to repurchase, within two years, up to 13% of the post-transaction shares outstanding.
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Addleshaw Goddard has advised longstanding client Diageo on its exit from its South African and Namibian joint ventures with Heineken N.V. and Ohlthaver & List, receiving £128m for selling its shares in the various businesses that form the joint ventures.
The deal, announced on 28 July, was led by Andrew Rosling, the head of the firm's Retail & Consumer sector team and Africa Business Group, supported by corporate associates Andy Grant and Steve Conyers. Patrick Speller led a team from Nabarro which advised Heineken N.V.
Slaughter and May advised INOVYN ChlorVinyls Limited (INOVYN) on its disposal of certain assets to International Chemical Investors Group (ICIG) and the establishment of a 50:50 joint venture with ICIG for a UK-based membrane chlorine plant.
INOVYN is a 50:50 joint venture between INEOS and Solvay, established on 1 July 2015, that combines their respective chlorvinyls activities. The assets disposed to ICIG under the transaction, which completed on 1 August 2015, consist of:
Simmons & Simmons has advised GlaxoSmithKline (‘GSK’), the UK’s largest pharmaceutical company, on its open science collaboration with the Francis Crick Institute in the aim to forge new scientific discoveries.
Noerr has advised McDonald’s Deutschland on the conclusion of a cooperation agreement with Autobahn Tank & Rast GmbH, which allows Tank & Rast to open restaurants under the McDonald’s brand at motorway service areas.
The two companies are pursuing the joint objective of establishing the McDonald's concept at more than 100 locations of Tank & Rast’s network. The first new restaurant units are expected to open before the end of this year. The majority of the new restaurants will open between 2016 and 2019.
Ashurst advised Hitachi Rail in relation to the contract award of the Thameslink contract for Traffic Management in partnership with Network Rail Infrastructure Limited (Network Rail).
Hitachi Rail will supply Network Rail with a traffic management solution providing the framework for a blue print to support the roll out of a full digital railway. This marks an important milestone in enabling railway operations to be flexible in meeting passenger demand, managing day to day operation of the railway, and supporting recovery in the event of a delay or disruption.
Simmons & Simmons has advised medical device and technology company, Adherium (NZ) Limited (‘Adherium’), on a groundbreaking long-term supply and development agreement to supply its digital health ‘Smartinhaler’™ to AstraZeneca AB (‘AstraZeneca’).
CMS has advised Erste Group Bank AG and its subsidiaries (“Erste Group”) on its agreement with Global Payments Inc., a leading worldwide provider of payment technology solutions, to establish a joint venture providing merchant acquiring and payment processing services to retailers in the Czech Republic, Romania and Slovakia.
Upon completion of the transaction, Erste Group will sell 51% of its merchant acquiring businesses in the three countries for EUR 29.94 million to Global Payments, resulting in a joint venture in which Erste Group will retain a 49% stake.