Slaughter and May teamed up with a Baker & McKenzie team led out of London to help US data giant Equinix in its £2.35bn takeover bid for UK rival and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer client Telecity.
Telecity, which was in talks to merge with Dutch peer Interxion before Equinix stepped in, instructed Freshfields’ Julian Makin and Ben Spiers to handle its sale. London-based Makin, a corporate partner who co-heads Freshfields’ mining and metals team, was heavily involved in the company’s listing on the main market of the London Stock Exchange and the firm was also advising on the company’s proposed Dutch takeover with Latham & Watkins acting for Interxion.
Meanwhile, Slaughters advised the Californian data company on the acquisition which involves paying 572.5p and issuing 0.0327 of new Equinix shares for each Telecity share – a 27% premium to Telecity’s closing price on 6 May. Its team was led by corporate partners Richard Smith and John Papanichola and included finance partner Matthew Tobin and competition specialist Philippe Chappatte. Cravath, Swaine & Moore acted for Equinix in the US, while De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek advised in the Netherlands and Hengeler Mueller in Germany.
For international due diligence and the corporate reorganisation work required, Equinix turned to Baker & McKenzie’s London-based global head of reorganisations, Kirsty Wilson, and finance partner Lynn Rosell Rowley.
Telecity has 39 data centres in 11 European countries and has customers including Spotify and Facebook. Equinix, whose in-house team consisted of general counsel Brandi Galvin Morandi and EMEA general counsel Peter Waters, said the deal, which comes amid growing demand for cloud storage in Europe and consolidation in the sector, would give it ‘increased network and cloud density to better serve customers’ and a footprint ‘to attract customers and pursue the emerging enterprise opportunity’.
tom.moore@legalease.co.uk