Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Linklaters advised on Glencore’s $2.5bn sale last month of a 40% stake in Glencore Agricultural Products to Canada Pension Plan Investment Board (CPPIB).
Glencore instructed a Linklaters team led by corporate heavyweights David Avery-Gee and Charlie Jacobs, while Freshfields corporate partners David Higgins and Richard Thexton advised CPPIB. Freshfields’ Amsterdam managing partner Winfred Knibbeler also advised on the antitrust aspects of the deal.
With the sale having been in the pipeline for nearly a year, the deal values the agricultural business at around $6bn. The sale proceeds will be used to reduce Glencore’s $30bn debt pile. The mining and commodities trader has suffered from a sharp fall in its share value over the past year amid the collapse in world commodity prices linked to China’s economic slowdown.
Last September Glencore gifted Linklaters with an advisory role on cutting $10.2bn of debt, with Jacobs, who handles the firm’s relationship with Glencore, selected to handle the process.
Freshfields previously advised longstanding client CPPIB on its $250m investment in Markit Group, another deal which Higgins led. However, Glencore did instruct Freshfields in March when the company sued the government of Colombia over claims it sought to revoke part of a coal mining licence.
Higgins said: ‘The business is quite global with activities in lots of different countries so you need a firm like Freshfields to work across multiple jurisdictions. We had to pull it together quite fast and it was a reasonably complex structuring because Glencore had to put together a complex reorganisation to create the agriculture business before we could invest in it.’
kathryn.mccann@legalease.co.uk