Mayer Brown's Private Equity team has advised Francisco Partners on the acquisition of ByBox, the international software and supply chain management company, for a purchase price of approximately £221 million.

ByBox provides smart locker technology and field service solutions that improve the efficiency of supply chains across a range of sectors. Headquartered in Oxford, UK, the company employs over 500 employees with a presence in over 20 countries worldwide.

International legal practice Osborne Clarke has appointed Thomas Devred – a regulatory and compliance Partner and a specialist in life sciences – to its team in France today.

With considerable expertise in health products compliance and regulation, Thomas works closely with key Pharma/Biotech, MedTech, cosmetics sector players to provide advice, dispute resolution and negotiate contracts

Clifford Chance has announced that James Gouwar has joined its Tax, Pensions & Employment (""TPE"") practice as a partner in New York.

King & Wood Mallesons London office welcomes new banking and finance partner Khai Nguyen.

Khai deals with various types of banking transactions (local and cross-jurisdiction), ranging from leveraged and syndicated loans, club loans, bilateral lending, asset based lending and real estate financing, acting for both lenders and borrowers. He has in-depth experience in the automotive and fintech sectors.

Davis Polk advised the underwriters on an SEC-registered offering on Schedule B by Oesterreichische Kontrollbank Aktiengesellschaft (“OeKB”) of its $1.5 billion 2.875% guaranteed global notes due 2021. The notes are guaranteed by the Republic of Austria.

Slaughter and May is advising RPC Group Plc ("RPC"), a leading global plastic products design and engineering company, in connection with the possible takeover offers by each of Apollo Global Management and Bain Capital which were announced this morning.

Apollo and Bain both have until 17:00 on October 8 to make a firm offer for RPC.

National law firm Shoosmiths has advised NVM Private Equity (NVM) on its £3.1m investment into Clarilis Limited, a provider of automated solutions software for the legal industry.

Clarilis, which is based in Birmingham and was founded by brothers James and Kevin Quinn in 2015, is a fast-growing business with clients throughout the UK and US, and this investment will help it to grow even further.

Travers Smith LLP advised market-leading music recognition app Shazam on the European Commission's investigation into its acquisition by technology giant Apple.

Although the deal did not meet the EU merger control thresholds, in February this year the European Commission started a merger investigation into Apple's purchase of Shazam following calls from Austria, France, Iceland, Italy, Norway, Spain and Sweden.  The case was referred for a more in-depth Phase II merger investigation in April, and was eventually cleared by the European Commission last week.

Clifford Chance has advised Samsung Electronics France in connection with the launch in France of its Samsung Pay solution for contactless payment by mobile phone, notably on aspects relating to the regulation of payment services under the new Payment Services Directive (PSD2), banking secrecy and personal data protection in the new framework laid out by the General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR).

Clifford Chance's Madrid and New York offices advised Natixis and certain of its partners (as Senior Lenders) and American General Life Insurance Company (AIG), Pacific Life Insurance Company (Pacific Life) and Metropolitan Life Insurance Company (MetLife) and certain of their affiliates (as Note Purchasers) on an innovative refinancing transaction relating to the Carhuaquero – Cajamarca Norte – Cáclic – Moyobamba Nueva transmission line project in Northern Peru.