Herbert Smith Freehills Paris has recently Arkema, France's leading chemicals producer, on the launch of its share capital increase with preferential subscription rights of shareholders for an amount of around €350 million.

The rights issue, which did not involve a waiver of preferential subscription rights, is aimed at financing part of the cost of acquiring the Bostik group, formerly of Total's specialty chemicals branch, as announced by Arkema on 19 September 2014.

The Herbert Smith Freehills team was led by corporate partner Frédéric Grillier, assisted by Olivier Jouffroy, Laurence Vincent and Céline Le Bot on the corporate aspects, as well as Jérôme Le Berre on the tax issues. Steve Thierbach (partner), Jessica He and Jacob Eisler from the London office assisted on the US law aspects of the deal. The Herbert Smith Freehills team worked closely with the in-house legal and finance teams at Arkema to complete this deal.

The syndicate of banks was advised by White & Case.