Nigel Cooke leads the team advising the UK giant on its £500m sale
Engineering giant Rolls-Royce turned to long-term adviser Eversheds Sutherland for the £500m sale of its unprofitable commercial marine division to Nordic technology company Kongsberg Gruppen.
Linklaters and Norway independent Thommessen advised the buyer, half-owned by the Norwegian government.
Led by corporate partner Nigel Cooke, the Eversheds team included co-head of global company commercial Keri Rees, corporate partners Robin Johnson and Amanda Partland, IP partner Adrian Toutoungi, commercial partner Nick Stubbs and competition partner James Lindop. Another Rolls-Royce go-to adviser, Slaughter and May, was on the deal too, advising on antitrust issues through partners Bertrand Louveaux and William Turtle. Linklaters partner Hugo Stolkin led the team advising Kongsberg.
Rees told Legal Business the team was tasked with an ‘impressive timetable’ to complete the deal before the summer.
According to an announcement Rolls-Royce made in January, weak demand for products in the offshore oil and gas market since 2015 had impacted its profitability. It has divested non-core businesses and reduced the number of sites from 27 to 15 – an overall reduction in footprint of 40%. It has also managed a reduction in its workforce by 30% to 4,200, with the majority now based in the Nordic region.
The marine business has operations in more than 30 countries and has one of the world’s most extensive maritime product and technology portfolios. Its sale involved a complex separation which is set to complete in 2019.
Rees struck an optimistic tone about the state of the market, saying it felt as busy as it had ever been across all sectors, although no-one could put their finger on why: ‘Who knows what it will be like in six months’ time but right now it looks really strong. We are seeing new instructions coming through all the time.’