Capital Markets (Equity)
Sector focused legal advice for corporate transactions
We have an international corporate team with extensive experience of advising on equity capital market transactions, including IPOs rights issues, open offers and placings on both the main market and AIM.
What we do
Our lawyers have extensive capital markets experience and are able to support and guide you through the legal and practical issues when coming to the market or subsequently looking to raise equity capital to support and finance the future growth of the business.
Our experience
We have experience of handling IPOs and secondary offerings on all the main exchanges, advising both issues, sponsors, lead managers, underwriters, nomads/brokers and depositaries. We provide below some examples of our work in this area:
- Advising ING Bank N.V. as sponsor and financial adviser to the recommended tender offer by Bank of Georgia Holdings Plc to acquire the entire share capital of Joint Stock Company Bank of Georgia held in the form of global depositary receipts and ordinary shares and the proposed application for admission of Plc's ordinary shares to the premium listing segment of the Official List of the UK Listing Authority and to trading on the London Stock Exchange.
- Advising Numis Securities Limited, as sponsor and underwriter and Lloyds TSB Bank Plc, as co-underwriter, in connection with a placing and open offer to raise £75 million by Chaucer Holdings Plc, an insurance and reinsurance group listed on the Official List.
- Advising Omega Insurance Holdings Limited on the application for admission of its common shares to the Official List and to trading on the London Stock Exchange's Main Market and on its concurrent offer on behalf of its subsidiary Omega Dedicated Limited to acquire up to £125 million of capacity on Lloyd's Syndicate 958 for 2010 and each subsequent year of account.
- Advising Citibank, N.A. as depositary receipts servicer and Citigroup Global Markets Deutschland AG as depositary on OJSC PhosAgro's US$538 million IPO in the form of shares and GDRs on the London Stock Exchange.
- Advising Catlin Group Limited and the newly formed Bermudian Class 3 reinsurer Long Bay Re Ltd on the proposed IPO on AIM of Long Bay and its proposed provision of collateralised reinsurance cover for a selected portion of the catastrophe risk portfolio of certain members of the Catlin Group.
- Acting as managers and nomad's counsel to Renaissance Capital and KBC Peel Hunt on the US$135 million AIM IPO of Volga Gas Plc, a UK holding company for Russian oil and gas licences.
- Advising Lancashire Holdings Limited on its US$1 billion IPO and listing on AIM, which was the largest-ever IPO on AIM, and its subsequent upgrade to trading on the Main Market of the London Stock Exchange, resulting in a market capitalisation of £860 million.
- Acting as issuer’s counsel to PJSC Novorossiysk Commercial Sea Port, on its successful IPO of shares in the form of GDRs, which raised US$1 billion and included both a Russian domestic offering and an international offering to investors pursuant to Rule 144A and Regulation S, with an admission to trading of the GDRs on the London Stock Exchange.
- Advising Xeo Exploration Plc, a company formed by EnCore Oil Plc for the purposes of exploiting certain exploration and appraisal assets located in the North Sea and the East Irish Sea, in connection with its proposed listing on AIM and raising funds by way of a placing to institutional investors and an offer to shareholders of EnCore Oil Plc.
- Advising Morgan Stanley and Unicredit, as sponsors, in connection with the IPO and listing on the London Stock Exchange of shares of JSC Acron, a leading Russian and global mineral fertilizer producer. Acron’s market capitalisation post listing was US$4 billion, making it one of the largest Russian companies to list on the LSE. Rule 144A Element.
