-
- Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Slaughter and May advised UK’s ‘big six’ energy providers Npower and SSE on the merger between their domestic retail operations. Freshfields corporate partners Simon Marchant, Julian Pritchard and Andrew Craig advised SSE, along with competition partners Deirdre Trapp and James Aitken. Slaughters corporate partners Richard Smith and Tim Boxell led the team advising Npower parent company Innogy, alongside competition partner Lisa Wright, financing partner Ed Fife, IP/IT partner Rob Sumroy, tax partner Gareth Miles, and pensions and employment partners Charles Cameron, Padraig Cronin and Daniel Schaffer. Best-friend firm Hengeler Mueller also advised Innogy, led by corporate partners Andreas Austmann and Thomas Meurer.
-
- Freshfields also advised CVC Capital Partners on two deals. The team advising on the buyout of business and compliance services outsourcer TMF was led by corporate partners Shawn der Kinderen and Charles Hayes, while European leveraged finance co-head Alex Mitchell advised on the financing side. On the sale of insulation appliance manufacturer Paroc, the Freshfields team was led by corporate partner Tim Wilmot.
-
- Taylor Wessing, with a team led by corporate partner Jeremy Landau, advised Boku, the independent direct carrier billing company, on its institutional placing and heavily-oversubscribed initial public offering on AIM raising £45m, based on a market value for the company of £125.9m. US firm Fenwick & West also advised Boku through partner Sam Angus, while Simon Griffiths led the Irwin Mitchell team advising broker Peel Hunt.
-
- White & Case advised carrier Kenya Airways on its $2bn financial restructuring, led by London partner Christian Pilkington and including London-based Justin Benson, Ben Davies and Allan Taylor, and US-based Michael Smith and Richard Kebrdle.
-
- White & Case and Freshfields were joined by Latham & Watkins as Italian telecom company Wind Tre rose €10.7bn through a cross-border financing deal involving 20 banks. White & Case finance partners Chris Utting and Ben Wilkinson, and capital markets partners Rob Mathews and Ingrid York advised Wind Tre, along with Milan corporate partners Michael Immordino and Iacopo Canino, and New York tax partner Raymond Simon. Freshfields Italian tax head Renato Paternollo led the team advising the Italian company on tax matters. Latham advised the underwriting banks, led by banking partner Stephen Kensell, capital markets partner Brett Cassidy and Milan-based banking partner Marcello Bragliani.
- Clifford Chance (CC) and Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom acted as US investment fund Global Infrastructure Partners (GIP) announced the acquisition of Singaporean Equis Energy for $5bn, a deal expected to close in the first quarter of 2018. CC’s London-based head of infrastructure M&A Brendan Moylan led the team acting for GIP. Skadden’s Hong Kong-based Jonathan Stone and Singapore partner Rajeev Duggal advised Equis.