McDermott Advised Mitsubishi Heavy Industries on its Offer to Create a Partnership with Alstom in the Energy Field

PARIS (26 June 2014) — The Paris office of international law firm McDermott Will & Emery advised Mitsubishi Heavy Industries on its offer to create a partnership with Alstom in the energy field. The offer contemplated the creation of a joint venture with Alstom on most of Alstom’s energy assets, including the steam turbines, hydro and grid businesses, representing a cash contribution by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries to Alstom of EUR 3.9b. The offer also included a proposal to acquire up to 10% of Alstom’s share capital, along with the French State.

Mitsubishi Heavy Industries’ offer was made jointly with Siemens, which offered to acquire Alstom’s gas turbine business. The combined offer valued Alstom’s energy business at EUR 14.6b (equity value) and contemplated a total cash contribution of EUR8.2b.

Through our Paris, Brussels, New York, London, Shanghai and Munich offices, we advised Mitsubishi Heavy Industries on all aspects of this offer, including its structuring, French corporate and securities law issues, French regulatory issues, French tax issues, EU, China and US antitrust issues and FCPA-related issues.

The McDermott team that acted for Mitsubishi Heavy Industries was led by Corporate partners Jacques Buhart, Bertrand Delafaye and Nicolas Lafont from our Paris office, together with Christian von Sydow (Munich), Philipp Werner (Brussels), Mike Kendall, Obi Madubuko (New York), Henry Chen (Shanghai) and Jon Dubrow (Washington D.C.).

McDermott Will & Emery is a premier international law firm with a diversified business practice. Numbering more than 1,100 lawyers, the firm has offices in Boston, Brussels, Chicago, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Houston, London, Los Angeles, Miami, Milan, Munich, New York, Orange County, Paris, Rome, Seoul, Silicon Valley and Washington, D.C and a strategic alliance with MWE China Law Offices in Shanghai. To serve the broad range of interests of international clients that do business in France, McDermott’s Paris office focuses on cross-border transactions, advising clients across its core practices including as M&A, tax, antitrust, public/regulatory law, employment law, litigation and international arbitration.