Public takeovers & mergers

Clifford Chance's international Corporate practice is uniquely equipped to advise clients on significant and complex M&A transactions all around the world. Since 2000, the firm has consistently been in the top 10 for both value and volume of deals globally, and on average the practice acts for over a quarter of the world's leading listed entities each year.

As corporates and other organisations take stock of changing economic circumstances following the financial crisis, an increasing proportion of global M&A activity has a cross-border element.  With our long established – and growing – international presence, and our depth of skills and resource in all major markets, we are ideally placed to support both long-standing and new clients on all of their major strategic transactions.

Full service capability and Sector focus

Public takeovers and mergers necessarily involve a wide range of specialist input from people across different practice areas.  In addition to advice on applicable corporate law and regulation, expertise in areas such as tax, antitrust, finance, intellectual property, employment, real estate and share option schemes is often needed, as well as capital market experience where deals involve an equity raising or bidders are issuing shares by way of consideration.  With our full service capability around our network, Clifford Chance provides clients with a "one-stop shop" for all aspects of their transaction.  Our sector focus further enhances our offering in M&A transactions.  Partners and lawyers with key experience and understanding of particular sectors (such as Financial Institutions, Private Equity, Healthcare, Energy and Infrastructure and TMT) provide invaluable insight on relevant deals.  Our sector specialists not only bring their own skills to bear, but also draw on the significant knowhow and experience accumulated around the firm, thereby going far beyond transactional advice and often giving clients a key competitive or tactical advantage.

More than pure legal advice

Clifford Chance has partners and lawyers across all regions who are highly-respected in public takeovers and mergers and who have significant experience both on domestic and multi-jurisdictional transactions.  However, we recognise that when undertaking M&A transactions our clients are looking for much more than pure legal and regulatory expertise.  Our focus is therefore on providing a service which is outstanding on every level – we must not only deliver unparalleled technical and structural advice on all aspects of the relevant transaction but we must also do so in the most effective and joined-up manner, liaising collaboratively with other advisors and bringing together all parts of Clifford Chance to provide a highly effective and user-friendly service.

Our firm is a single global partnership.  When conducting multi-jurisdictional transactions we are working with a team of  partners and colleagues around the network with whom we have real personal relationships.  We share a common ethos and approach and we have real experience of working together, providing a single lead contact point for clients and maximising efficiencies generally.  Where other external counsel are involved, in regions where we do not have our own offices, we seek to integrate those firms into our team to create an impression for the client that they have one legal advisor and not multiple law firms on the deal. Our task is to combine top quality structural, legal and regulatory input with outstanding project management.  We also play the important role of "trusted advisor" on major public transactions where our clients are increasingly looking to us for broader strategic, tactical and commercial guidance when pursuing transformational deals.  Feedback after major transactions consistently demonstrates that clients value very highly the Clifford Chance approach outlined above.

The Bloomberg global M&A league tables for 2009 ranked Clifford Chance second of all international law firms, the highest of all UK based firms.  This reflects the extent of our recent involvement in some of the most high-profile and significant public M&A deals around the world.  We continue to win a growing number of major mandates in this area as clients see the outstanding quality of our global transactional practice. But we should never be complacent – first class technical advice and client service remain a priority on each and every transaction.