September 27, 2011 7:12 PM
Lateral Acquisitions Abroad Help Keep Firms Busy on Mining Deals
Posted by Brian Baxter
While the overall MA market slowed in the third quarter, mining and natural resources-related deal work continues to keep law firms busy in places like Africa and Australia.
And in the case of both Clifford Chance and Norton Rose, the far-flung assignments came as the result of the firms making lateral acquisitions of their own abroad. The two entered local legal markets in Australia and Africa, respectively, within the past year in order to capitalize on increased opportunities for cross-border transactional work and gain access to clients in emerging markets.
One such transaction in which Norton Rose has a hand: Oklahoma City–based chemical company Tronox announced Monday that it had agreed to acquire the mining sands operations of South Africa’s Exxaro Resources in exchange for a 38.5 percent equity stake in a new company that Tronox will have majority control over. Bloomberg values the merger at around $3.3 billion.
Kirkland Ellis corporate partners Daniel Wolf, Claire Sheng, and David Fox, tax partners Jeffrey Sheffield, Todd Maynes, and Gregory Gallagher, and debt finance
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