Lawyers working on the £24.3bn ARM Holdings takeover by Tokyo-based telecoms group SoftBank expect more M&A deals to come out of Japan after Slaughter and May, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Davis Polk & Wardwell and Morrison & Foerster (MoFo) scored roles on the deal.
Slaughters advised its long-term client, chip designer ARM, on the largest-ever acquisition of a European tech business. Senior partner Steve Cooke led on the deal alongside corporate partner Chris McGaffin and Brussels competition partner Jordan Ellison. Davis Polk worked alongside Slaughters advising ARM, with a team including managing partner Thomas Reid and London-based corporate partner Reuven Young.
SoftBank’s longstanding adviser MoFo acted for the Japanese bank, which also turned to Freshfields for advice from the firm’s global co-head of M&A Ben Spiers and corporate partner Stephen Hewes.MoFo’s team was led by the firm’s Tokyo managing partner Kenneth Siegel and Graeme Sloan, the firm’s London head of corporate and global co-chair of M&A.
Sloan said he expects more UK work to come out of Japan: ‘We’ve been speaking a lot to Japanese and other Asian clients about UK public M&A. There’s been much talk about Brexit, but there has been a great deal of interest in the way that the UK public M&A process works too. The devaluation of sterling makes UK assets more affordable.
‘This is the largest-ever investment from Japan into the UK. It’s also the largest-ever cash-only deal in the UK. There have been some higher-valued deals, but that’s because they had a securities exchange element. In terms of hard cash, this is the biggest.’
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and White & Case also won roles on the deal, advising The Raine Group and Mizuho Securities Co, both financial advisers to SoftBank, respectively. London partner Simon Jay led the Cleary team, while Tokyo partner Jun Usami and London’s Philip Broke led for White & Case.