Slaughter and May and Freshfields are set to receive up to £25.5m in legal fees, after advising on the sale of Rotork to Swiss industrials company ABB.
The deal, agreed last month, sees FTSE 250 company Rotork sell to ABB for £4.1bn, and is expected to complete in the first half of 2027.
Slaughters, which advised Rotork on the transaction, is in line to receive up to £12.5m in legal fees, according to the deal’s scheme document.
The firm’s team was led by co-head of corporate M&A Simon Nicholls and corporate partners Hemita Sumanasuriya and Jack Wharton.
Employment and incentives partner Phil Linnard, competition partner and head of the firm’s Brussels office Anna Lyle-Smyth, and pensions partner Chris Sharpe also advised on the deal.
The firm has advised on several £1bn+ take privates so far this year, including EQT’s acquisition of Intertek, for an agreed £10.9bn.
Legal Business revealed last week that Slaughters is in line to take up to £22m for its work advising Intertek.
Freshfields acted for ABB on the acquisition, and is in line to receive up to £13m in legal fees.
Leading the firm’s team was chair of the firm’s board and M&A partner Piers Prichard Jones and M&A partner Tamara Young, both based in London.
Also involved were global leveraged finance co-head Alex Mitchell, based in London, antitrust partner Helmut Bergmann, based in Berlin, and competition partner Martin McElwee, based in Brussels and London, as well as tax partner Peter Clements and employment partner David Mendel, both in London.
The transaction is the second multibillion deal Freshfields has advised ABB on in the last year, as it also acted on the sale of its robotics division to SoftBank for $5.375bn last October.
In addition, Freshfields also advised on EQT’s acquisition of Intertek, acting for EQT, with the firm set to receive between £20.6m and £21.8m in legal fees for its work on the deal.
