Corporate > Mergers and Acquisitions

Financial and strategic buyers and sellers must navigate constantly changing financing challenges, valuation gaps, increased investor demands and an ever-changing regulatory landscape. Now more than ever, successful transactions rely upon the support of experienced, practical and creative legal counsel.

Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP’s mergers and acquisitions (M&A) practice represents public and private companies, prominent investment funds, boards of directors and special committees, investors, senior management and shareholders in complex mergers, acquisitions, dispositions, joint ventures, partnerships and other strategic transactions. Our core M&A team is supported by our debt finance, tax, executive compensation and employee benefits, labor, intellectual property, real estate, environmental, antitrust, regulatory and policy practitioners. Our network includes relationships with financial advisors, investment banks, accountants and lenders throughout the world.

In 2012, Akin Gump handled in excess of $70 billion in M&A deals.  We ranked fifth among firms advising on M&A deals in Russia and the CIS according to mergermarket, and in the top 20 among firms advising principals on U.S. and European M&A deals (by volume) according to Bloomberg. The firm was named “Corporate Team of the Year” at the Legal Business Awards 2012 in London and is recognized consistently by Corporate Board Member as a top corporate law firm in the United States in an annual survey of senior officers and directors of public companies.

Akin Gump has been at the forefront of some of the most sophisticated mid- and large-cap transactions in recent years. In coordination with our preeminent financial restructuring practice, the firm has achieved market leadership positions for our role in distressed transactions, restructurings and 363 sales. In addition to closing scores of middle-market deals, our team has recently advised on a number of high-profile transactions, including global telecommunications mergers, a major patent auction, a going private transaction for a homebuilder, a leveraged buyout of a national outdoor entertainment company and trendsetting deals in the renewable and traditional energy industry.

Our M&A team advises clients with respect to:

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  • Renova. Represented longtime client, a leading private business group, as a member of the Alfa-Access-Renova (AAR) consortium, in relation to the landmark sale of AAR’s stake in TNK-BP to Rosneft for an all-cash consideration of $28 billion.  This is the largest-ever corporate transaction in the history of modern Russia.  The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2013.
  • VimpelCom Ltd.  Represented one of the world’s largest mobile telecommunications companies in its $27.5 billion acquisition of Wind Telecom, comprising mobile communications assets in Italy, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Canada and North and Sub-Saharan Africa. Akin Gump was named “Corporate Team of the Year” at the Legal Business Awards 2012 for its work on this transaction.
  • Official Committee of Unsecured Creditors of Nortel Networks Inc. Represented client in connection with Nortel Network Corporation’s bankruptcy auction of more than 6,000 patents and patent applications. After a multiday auction, a consortium consisting of Apple, EMC, Ericsson, Microsoft, Research In Motion and Sony emerged as the winning bidder with a purchase price of $4.5 billion.
  • Alterra Capital Holdings Limited.  Represented the Bermuda-based reinsurer and longtime client in its planned $3.13 billion sale to Markel Corporation, a specialty insurer.  Alterra was formed by the 2010 merger of equals between Max Capital Group Ltd. and Harbor Point Limited.  The transaction is expected to close in the first half of 2013.
  • OAO Surgutneftegas. Represented client in sale of its 21.2 percent stake in MOL Hungarian Oil and Gas Company to the Hungarian government for €1.88 billion (approximately $2.65 billion).
  • Hughes Communications Inc. Represented client in $2 billion acquisition by an affiliate of EchoStar.
  • Laclede Group. Represented the owner of Missouri’s largest natural gas company in its $1.04 billion acquisition of Missouri Gas Energy and New England Gas Company.
  • The Dow Chemical Company. Represented client in the formation of a joint venture with Mitsui & Co., Ltd., combining the strengths of two global companies to construct, own and operate a $910 million chlor-alkali plant on the U.S. Gulf Coast. Akin Gump subsequently represented Dow and the joint venture, Dow-Mitsui Chlor Alkali, LLC, in a $677 million project financing to fund the construction of the plant.
  • Great White Energy Services. Represented client in $742 million sale to Archer Limited, a global oilfield service company specializing in drilling services and well services.
  • Rizvi Traverse Management LLC.  Represented the private equity fund in its acquisition of a majority stake in music performance-rights company SESAC Inc. for about $600 million.
  • Emerging Capital Partners. Represented client in its majority-stake investment in Java House Nairobi, Kenya’s leading café and casual dining restaurant operator—the first private equity transaction in the restaurant sector in East Africa.
  • The Special Committee of the Board of Directors of Gushan Environmental Energy Limited. Represented client in a proposed going private transaction.
  • Offshore family office. Represented client in acquisition of preferred shares in Digiboo, a new film distribution platform offering consumers the ability to download major studio films to their computers or flash drives via an airport kiosk.

  • Vision Capital.  Represented private equity fund Vision Capital and its partners Landmark Partners, Pinebridge Secondary Partners and Montauk Triguard in a landmark deal to acquire private equity fund Willis Stein & Partners, which was approaching the end of its term but still holding valuable portfolio investments.