In Scotland’s biggest corporate deal this year, Pinsent Masons, Travers Smith and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom all won roles acting on the sale of Skyscanner for £1.4bn.
Pinsents advised the flight and holiday comparison website on its sale to Chinese international travel agency CTrip.com International. The firm’s team was led by Edinburgh-based corporate finance partner Alan Diamond and Glasgow-based corporate finance head Rosalie Chadwick.
Skyscanner’s legal team, which won In-house Team of the Year at the Legal Business Awards, was led by the company’s chief legal officer Carolyn Jameson (pictured).
Skadden advised Nasdaq listed CTrip on corporate matters with a team led by London-based corporate partner John Adebiyi. Travers partner Mahesh Varia advised CTrip on employee incentives.
Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson also acted for Skyscanner on the deal, advising on US securities matters. Partners Brian Miner and Josh Wechsler acted for the tech company.
Earlier this year, Pinsents also advised Skyscanner on £128m of private placement of shares. Pinsents’ Diamond told Legal Business: ‘We advised on the primary and secondary fundraising rounds, the largest for a UK tech company for quite some period of times. It’s a fantastic deal for the Scottish market.’
Skyscanner was founded in 2001 in Edinburgh. The company now has more than 50 million visitors each month and an annual turnover of £120m. In yesterday’s Autumn Statement, UK chancellor Phillip Hammond proposed measures to protect UK tech companies from foreign takeovers.
This year has seen UK tech firm ARM Holdings taken over by Japanese company SoftBank Group. ARM was advised by Slaughter and May, while Morrison & Foerster and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer acted for SoftBank.
matthew.field@legalease.co.uk
