Dealwatch: PE deals continue to dominate agenda for City firms
Legal Business
Ropes & Gray’s London arm advised on the largest-ever UK private equity software buyout. Helen Croke (pictured) led the team advising Intermediate Capital Group (ICG) on a £1.3bn joint partnership investment. ICG was joined by Hg Saturn Fund as they invested in IRIS Software Group, a business-critical software provider for the UK accountancy, education and business market. Hg Saturn was advised on the transaction by Linklaters, while Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom acted for IRIS.
White & Case continued its strong run of private equity deals as the firm advised CVC Capital Partners on the €1.01bn loan financing of a consortium buyout of Finnish private healthcare provider Mehiläinen. The team comprised banking partners Martin Forbes and Justin Wagstaff. Meanwhile Latham & Watkins advised CVC and the banks – UBS, M&S, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Jefferies, Credit Suisse, KeyBank and Barclays. Kirkland & Ellis advised Summit Partners, which was a selling shareholder.
Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer was joined by Magic Circle counterpart Slaughter and May as the pair advised on Vodafone’s €18.4bn buyout of Liberty Global’s European assets. The Freshfields team, advising Liberty, was led by M&A partner David Sonter and intellectual property partner David Brooks. Meanwhile, Slaughters advised Vodafone as the firm fielded a team led by corporate partners Roland Turnill and Susannah Macknay. Latham advised Liberty on German antitrust matters, while Ropes advised on financing aspects of the deal. CMS Cameron McKenna Nabarro Olswang and Shearman & Sterling advised on Hungarian/Czech law and US legal aspects of the deal respectively.
CMS advised London-headquartered developer Mainstream Renewable Power on its sale of the £2bn Neart na Gaoithe offshore wind farm in Scotland to EDF Energy’s renewables subsidiary EDF Energies Nouvelles. The CMS team advising the seller was led by London partners Charles Currier and Munir Hassan. Pinsent Masons acted for EDF, while ByrneWallace provided Irish legal advice to Mainstream.
Freshfields, meanwhile, advised on the €7bn merger of hearing aid makers Sivantos and Widex, creating the third-largest supplier in the world, with Swedish private equity house EQT owning the majority share in the combined company. Freshfields led with a team comprising German partners Wessel Heukamp, Ludwig Leyendecker, Uta Itzen and Katrin Gaßner. Danish law firm Plesner also advised on the deal, as did Copenhagen-based Kromann Reumert, alongside Latham, which advised on the finance aspects of the merger.
Finally, Eversheds Sutherland acted for the shareholders of UK engineering company John Guest on its $687m sale to Australia-based plumbing group Reliance Worldwide Corporation (RWC). The Eversheds team was led by M&A partner Chris Halliday, who was supported by employment partner Elizabeth Graves, real estate partner Iftkhar Ahmed and tax partner Ben Jones. Herbert Smith Freehills was legal adviser to RWC.