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  • November 13, 2013 |

    Cleary and Paul Hastings tuck in to Chinese meat producer IPO

    Paul Hastings and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton are understood to have been appointed as lead advisers on the IPO of Chinese meat processing company Shuanghui International, estimated to be worth up to $6bn (£3.75bn). The planned listing would be the biggest in Hong Kong in four years, providing a welcome boost to the local IPO market, which has seen a dearth of high-value flotations since the middle of 2012. It follows Shuanghui's takeover of the world's largest pork producer – Virginia-based Smithfield Foods – earlier this year. That deal, valued at $7.1bn (£4.7bn), marked the largest ever acquisition of a US company by a Chinese business.

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  • November 12, 2013 |

    Virgin Group kicks off review of legal panel

    Virgin Group has launched a review its legal panel, which currently runs to eight firms, ahead of possible changes to the roster.

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  • October 24, 2013 |

    Simpson Thacher-Blackstone ties loosen as PE house shops around

    Simpson Thacher's role as the main adviser to major client Blackstone Group is being challenged in Europe, as the private equity house looks to widen the pool of firms it uses for important mandates. Legal Week has learnt that Blackstone is looking to several other US law firms to handle a growing pipeline of deals. Market speculation that private equity-headed buyouts and real estate transactions will pick up in the first half of 2014 has put several private equity lawyers on high alert in the City.

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  • October 24, 2013 |

    Exit of Links stars puts focus on magic circle's struggle to break into the private equity market

    The departure of Ian Bagshaw (pictured, left) and Richard Youle (pictured, right) from Linklaters may have been widely anticipated, but their decision to join White & Case has raised questions about the magic circle's ability to compete against US firms in the field of private equity. The duo's move is the latest in a long line of high-profile departures from City firms, including Raymond McKeeve's exit from Berwin Leighton Paisner to join Jones Day and the hire by Latham & Watkins of David Walker, Clifford Chance's erstwhile private equity chief. It is a fairly open secret that Bagshaw and Youle's CVs have been on the market for some time. In 2010 the pair looked set to join Ropes & Gray before Linklaters persuaded them to stay on with what a source has described as "a sweetheart package".

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  • October 23, 2013 |

    SJB, Kirkland and Simpson Thacher lead on €1bn KKR Serbian cable deal

    SJ Berwin, Kirkland & Ellis and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett have won roles advising on buyout firm Kohlberg Kravis Roberts' (KKR's) takeover of Serbia's largest cable company in a deal worth €1bn (£847m). The buyout firm has bought telecommunications company SBB/Telemach from private equity group Mid Europa Partners. The acquisition marks US-headquartered KKR's first investment in eastern Europe. It is expected to complete by the first quarter of 2014.

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  • October 21, 2013 |

    Ashurst, Freshfields, CC grab roles on Merlin Entertainments' £4bn flotation

    Ashurst, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer, Clifford Chance and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett have landed roles on the £4bn IPO of Merlin Entertainments Group. Merlin – which owns Madame Tussauds, Alton Towers and the Legoland theme parks - is controlled by Danish investment company Kirkbi and private equity houses CVC and Blackstone. Merlin's investors will sell some of their stakes but remain shareholders.

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  • October 16, 2013 |

    Simpson and Kirkland land top roles on $1bn Melrose-KKR deal

    Simpson Thacher & Bartlett and Kirkland & Ellis have taken the lead roles on Melrose Industries' $1bn (£627m) sale of construction manufacturing assets Crosby and Acco to private equity house Kohlberg Kravis Roberts (KKR). Simpson Thacher acted for Melrose, leaving longstanding client KKR to turn to Kirkland on the deal. Both Crosby, an Oklahoma-based manufacturer of rigging and lifting equipment, and Acco, a smaller Pennsylvania producer of custom-built material handling equipment, were originally acquired as part of Melrose's 2008 buyout of engineering group FKI.

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  • October 11, 2013 |

    JPMorgan puts quarterly loss down to $9.2bn legal bill

    JPMorgan Chase has blamed its $400m quarterly loss on $9.2bn legal costs, "saying a strong underlying performance" had been "marred by large legal expense". The results, which were announced today (11 October), are the first time the bank has posted a quarterly loss in more than eight years.

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  • October 10, 2013 |

    Davis Polk and Simpson Thacher land roles on $125m US listing for Chinese internet giant

    US pair Davis Polk & Wardwell and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett have scored mandates on the planned New York listing of Chinese internet company Baidu's online travel unit. The listing of Qunar Cayman Islands, valued at $125m (£78m), comes as China's big four internet companies compete with each other to grow their businesses abroad. The initial public offering (IPO) is thought to be the largest by a Chinese company in the US for two years. Davis Polk won the role of issuers' counsel, fielding a team led by Beijing-based capital markets partner Li He.

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  • October 9, 2013 |

    CC private equity partner re-joins David Walker at Latham

    Latham & Watkins has raided Clifford Chance's (CC) private equity practice for the second time this year with the hire of Tom Evans as partner. Evans joins just months after CC private equity chief and key Carlyle relationship partner David Walker made the switch.

    1 minute read