Public Takeovers and Mergers

We are a market leader in public takeovers and mergers and advise targets, bidders and financial advisers on UK and cross-border deals.

We have experience in recommended and hostile bids as well as those that involve competing bidders. We have a good relationship with the Takeover Panel, the organisation that governs public takeovers in the UK. One of our partners was recently on secondment to the Takeover Panel as a Secretary. In this role he was working closely with the Director General and the rest of the permanent and seconded staff.

The deals on which we advise are:

• strategically significant - we advised on the largest recommended takeover of 2007
• groundbreaking - we advised on the first UK-Canadian dual listed company and the first ever hostile bid for a dual listed company by a dual listed company

Many of our largest takeovers and mergers have a financing element and our Acquisition and Leveraged Finance lawyers can advise on complex, highly structured and leveraged deals. We recently advised Akzo Nobel on its bridge financing in relation to its bid for ICI where the financing arrangements were negotiated in difficult financial markets and against the background of the "credit crunch".