Latham & Watkins, Linklaters and Sullivan & Cromwell are all advising as German conglomerate Siemens plans to list its €40bn medical technology unit in what will be one of the largest IPOs in the country since Deutsche Telekom floated for €13bn in 1996.
The listing is slated for the first half of 2018 on the Prime Standard segment of the Frankfurt Stock Exchange and will see Siemens create Siemens Healthineers, a spin-off of the company’s medical technology business. After the listing, Siemens will become the new company’s most significant shareholder.
Siemens’ medical technology division is the largest contributor of revenue to the business, achieving sales of €13.8bn in the 2016/17 business year.
The Latham team advising longstanding client Siemens is led by Frankfurt capital markets partner Oliver Seiler alongside Munich corporate partner Rainer Traugott. Hamburg corporate partner Dirk Kocher, Düsseldorf corporate partner Nikolaos Paschos, Hamburg regulatory partner Christoph Engeler and Munich tax partner Thomas Fox make up the Magic Circle firm’s German team. In London, capital markets partner David Boles also advised for Latham.
Linklaters is representing Siemens Healthineers on the IPO, spearheaded by Düsseldorf corporate partner Ralph Wollburg with support from Frankfurt capital markets partner Marco Carbonare. US firm Sullivan & Cromwell is acting for a consortium of banks including Goldman Sachs, Deutsche Bank and JPMorgan. The firm’s team comprises Frankfurt capital market partners Carsten Berrar and Krystian Cznerniecki.
For Latham it is a second major instruction by Siemens in a year, as the firm advised the company on its $4.5bn acquisition of US software provider Mentor Graphics in November 2016 .
The transaction saw Latham field a 15-partner team, led by New York corporate partners Adel Aslani-Far and Eli Hunt, alongside New York partner Jim Gorton and London employment and pensions partner Catherine Drinnan. Traugott, who is acting on the IPO, also advised.