Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer has advised Mercuria Energy Group on China National Chemical Corporation’s acquisition of a 12% interest in Mercuria.
Mercuria Energy Group, one of the world’s largest independent integrated energy and commodities trading companies, completed the acquisition by China National Chemical Corporation ("ChemChina"), one of China’s largest chemical companies, through its subsidiary ChemChina Petrochemical Co., Ltd, of a 12% strategic investment in the Mercuria Energy group.

A Travers Smith team led by private equity partner, Helen Croke, has advised the founders of CoreHR, a leading provider of cloud-based human capital management (“HCM”) and payroll software, on a strategic growth investment from JMI Equity, a growth equity firm focused on investing in leading software and services companies, and JMI Services LLC, which is the family investment company of John J. Moores.

The Travers Smith team also included tax partner Kathleen Russ and private equity associates Lauren Causon and Tom Hartwright.

Northill Capital, the UK-based asset management firm, has agreed to acquire a majority interest in the Danish industry-leading European high yield manager Capital Four. Plesner has acted as lead legal advisor to Northill Capital.

Capital Four was founded in 2007 and manages European high yield strategies across High Yield Bonds, Leveraged Loans, Credit Long/Short and Direct Lending predominantly on behalf of institutional investors. Capital Four is the largest independent high yield investment manager in Europe with approximately EUR 6 billion of assets under management.

VISCHER advises BiognoSYS AG, a leading company acting in the field of next-generation proteomics, in a significant series C funding from a corporate investment fund. The funds will be invested in establishing the business development and a new US service operation as well as in the development of new workflows and products for high-content protein analysis. The VISCHER Team was led by Dr. Matthias Staehelin (Partner) and Dania Salvisberg-Schneider (Senior Associate), both Corporate.

Vinge advised Statoil in connection with its acquisition of shares in Lundin Petroleum AB (publ) corresponding to approximately 12 percent of the shares and votes. The total purchase price amounted to approximately SEK 4.6 billion.
 
Statoil is an international energy company with approximately 22,000 employees and operations in 36 countries. Statoil is headquartered in Stavanger, Norway, and is listed on the New York Stock Exchange and Oslo Børs.
 
Vinge’s team consisted of Göran Nyström, Dain Hård Nevonen and Rikard Lindahl.

P+P Pöllath + Partners provided legal advice to Inventure Management Pte. Ltd. with regard to a financing round for XOLUTION GmbH, amounting to EUR 45 million. Other investors include Inventages Venture Capital, which was previously the largest shareholder in XOLUTION.

Transaction marks the largest PE deal of the year so far

Alberta Investment Management Corporation (AIMCo) has announced the sale of its 50% stake in Autopista Central de Chile, a Santiago-based toll road infrastructure asset, to Abertis Infraestructuras SA (Abertis) for EUR948 million.

In late 2014 and early 2015 we acted as lead counsel co-ordinating all aspects of the successful €800 million hostile mandatory public takeover offer by Joma Industrial Source Corp (Joma) of CAT Oil AG, an Austria-based holding company which is listed on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange (O2C). The shares in CAT Oil were held via a number of Cyprus sub-holding companies and partnerships and the bid was strongly resisted by the incumbent management. CAT Oil's management and supervisory boards finally accepted the takeover offer and recommended it to other shareholders in January 2015.

The Thames Valley office of national law firm Shoosmiths has advised August Equity on their investment of capital into Wax Digital, a leading global eProcurement solutions provider.

Private equity firm, August Equity, invests in small and medium-sized UK businesses who they help to build through acquisition and organic growth. They specialise in spotting opportunities for long-term growth in markets that are changing.

Lawyers from Clifford Chance's Prague office have advised W.A.G. payment solutions, a.s. (“Eurowag”), a leader in cash-free payment systems for passenger and freight carriers and the operator of a chain of express filling stations, on the sale by auction of a minority stake in the company to the global private equity firm TA Associates.