McDermott Will & Emery and CMS Hasche Sigle have won the lead roles in advising Telefónica Deutschland’s €3.62bn rights offering to help finance the acquisition of E-Plus Group from KPN.
The rights offering comes after Dutch telecoms company Koninklijke KPN sold its German mobile telecoms subsidiary E-Plus to Telefónica Deutschland for €8.1bn at the end of July, for which McDermott Will & Emery, Allen & Overy and CMS Hasche Sigle all scored leading roles on.
McDermott´s team advised Telefónica SA, the largest shareholder of Telefónica Deutschland, led by Frankfurt-based US corporate partner Joseph Marx and corporate partners Philipp von Ilberg, Clemens Just and Martin Kniehase in Frankfurt. The firm’s New York corporate partners Joel Rubinstein and Rick Mitchell, and corporate partner Nick Aziz in London also advised on the transaction.
Telefónica Deutschland was advised by CMS Hasche Sigle with a team including partners Oliver Thurn, Philipp Melzer, Daniel Winterfeldt, Martin Kuhn and Martin Kolbinger.
Spanish-based law firm Olleros Abogados also advised on the deal with corporate partner Jaime Olleros leading a team that included partner Gonzalo Ceron and associate Alicia Sanchez.
Telefónica Deutschland is issuing over 1.1 billion new shares priced at €3.24 per share, implying a discount to the theoretical ex-rights price of 28.32%. The underwriters on this deal include Citigroup Global Markets, HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt, Morgan Stanley and UBS, while the joint bookrunners are BofA Merrill Lynch and JP Morgan Securities.
Marx said: ‘We are very pleased to have advised Telefónica, S.A. on this very significant deal, which demonstrates our growing relationship with Telefónica, S.A. in Europe and the growth of our capital markets practice in Germany.’
jaishree.kalia@legalease.co.uk