A large multi-office team from Holman Fenwick Willan (HFW), led by Brian Gordon in Singapore, and James Lewis and Nick Hutton in London, with support from Robert Finney and Steven Paull, recently acted for Indonesian client Recapital Investment Group in relation to the disposal of its entire shareholding in Bumi plc, a company listed on the London Stock Exchange. The transaction involved the sale of 24.2m shares with a market value of over £90m.
The deal, which has attracted intense press interest, was driven primarily by a December 2012 ruling from the UK Takeover Panel requiring certain of the shareholders of Bumi plc to divest themselves of their shares.
The transaction involved three separate disposals of shares to investors and required the HFW cross-office team to liaise closely to manage the three sales in tandem. Equally key to the sale were HFW's submissions to and meetings with the UK Takeover Panel in order to obtain its consent to each of the individual sales. HFW worked with the many interests involved in Bumi plc in securing Takeover Panel approval.
The timeframe to close the transaction was very short and required a huge team effort. The large HFW team was drawn from its Singapore and London offices, combining expertise from the firm’s corporate, finance, regulatory, and energy and natural resources departments.
Alistair Mackie, HFW’s global head of Corporate says: “It is a fantastic achievement for the firm to have successfully concluded this deal within such a tight timescale. This is a tremendous credit to our corporate capability and our ability to field an integrated transactional team across multiple offices. We’ve built a great deal of capability over the last few years to do this type of work in sectors such as this and this deal is testament to that”.
Thomas W. Shreve, Chief Executive Officer of Recapital Investment Group, says: "The dedication of the team was impressive, the expertise and experience made available to us were consistently excellent, and the use of lawyers in different time zones to keep the process moving forward 24 hours a day was nicely done".
Greg Gray, HFW’s global Managing Partner says: “This type of transaction is exactly what we’ve built such a strong corporate team to act upon and is illustrative of the way we work. It was an extremely complicated transaction, requiring the highest quality legal capabilities, combined with a deep knowledge of the energy and natural resources sector, and an innate ability just to get the job done. We are delighted to have been able to take a lead role in driving this deal to its conclusion”.
Over the last few years, HFW has invested in its transactional capabilities, hiring lawyers from a number of leading firms, including Clifford Chance, Lovells, SNR Denton and the now defunct Dewey & LeBoeuf. As a result, the firm now has an enhanced non-contentious capability across its international offices and has been successful in winning a number of corporate mandates within its core sectors.
http://www.hfw.com/HFW-Lead-Role-Bumi-plc-Feb-2013
