Clifford Chance

Clifford Chance advises Wendel SE on completion of the acquisition by its portfolio company Stahl of a leather division of BASF SE

Following the acquisition of the leather chemicals division of BASF SE, one of the world’s largest chemical companies, in March 2017 by Stahl Group (portfolio company of Wendel SE), Clifford Chance advised Wendel SE and Stahl in relation to the completion of this transaction. The leather chemicals division operates in a number of countries including China, Hong Kong, Singapore, India, Spain, Italy, USA, Thailand, South Africa, Turkey, Uruguay, Germany and Brazil.

The transaction included the leather chemicals production site of L’Hospitalet in Spain in addition to mid-term and long-term supply agreements under which BASF will supply significant volumes of leather chemicals products to Stahl from its current manufacturing facilities located in Germany and India that will not be carved-out.

In exchange for contributing its assets to Stahl, BASF received 16% of the equity of Stahl and a cash consideration of c. EUR 111 million. Stahl welcomed BASF as a shareholder alongside Wendel who will remain the controlling shareholder of the company (c. 63%), Clariant AG (c. 19%) and other minority shareholders.

The deal team was led by Gilles Lebreton (Paris) and consisted of Line Poliquin, Rona Nisar, Pieter Wiegman and Sophie Herweijer (Amsterdam). Ulrich Pfeffer, Dimitri Slobodenjuk (Düsseldorf), Katrin Schallenberg, Amélie Lavenir (Paris) and Marc Besen (Brussels) advised on antitrust matters, Katia Gauzès, Dunja Damjanovic-Pralong, Florès Jiang and Stéfany Sassi (Luxembourg) advised on Luxembourg corporate matters and Serkan Özel together with Arwin Lok (Amsterdam) provided notarial assistance. Stefan Simon (Frankfurt) as well as Floris van de Bult and Sanne Blankestijn (Amsterdam) advised on employment aspects of the transaction. Dessislava Savova and Olivier Gaillard (Paris) advised on commercial arrangements. Clifford Chance teams in Paris, Amsterdam, Madrid, New York, London and Singapore led by Pierre Benoit Pabot du Chatelard and Quentin Herve (Paris) advised on the banking and finance matters, Guillermo Guardia, Carme Briera, Alba Sande and Jose Maria Vilaseca (Barcelona) advised on Spanish regulatory compliance and corporate matters. Clifford Chance teams led by Glen Ma (Shanghai), Melissa Ng (Singapore), Kemal Aksel (Istanbul), Frederik Mühl (Frankfurt) and Benjamin Sibbet (New York) also assisted on corporate matters of the transaction.