Linklaters

Linklaters was last night named Legal Advisor of the Year for the second year running, as well as French Legal Advisor of the Year, at the third annual Financial Times and mergermarket European M&A Awards.

The awards recognise corporate, private equity, banking and legal M&A expertise across a number of European jurisdictions. Winners are identified by using mergermarket M&A data and expert opinion from an independent panel of leading European M&A practitioners.

According to the Financial Times and mergermarket, the Legal Advisor of the Year award went to Linklaters for having 'topped mergermarket deal tables consistently throughout 2009 with landmark deals'. Key European deals that Linklaters has acted on over the past year include advising:

• Rio Tinto on its US$15.2bn rights issue, the aborted US$19.8bn strategic partnership with Chinalco, the proposed joint venture with BHP Billiton to combine their iron ore production operations in Western Australia, and its ongoing divestment programme
• BlackRock on the non-US elements of its acquisition of Barclays Bank PLC’s investment management business BGI
• Centrica plc (UK) on the formation of two joint ventures with EDF, whereby Centrica will acquire a 20% stake in British Energy and a 20% stake in EDF’s new nuclear build in the UK, and the sale of SPE by Centrica to EDF
• Friends Provident plc on the demerger of its 52% stake in UK asset management company F&C Asset Management plc and, separately, the takeover of Friends Provident by Resolution Holdings (UK) Limited
• HgCapital on the recommended bid by for Goldshield Group plc
• RWE on strategic issues regarding RWE's acquisition of Essent Holding's energy generation operations, including the disposal of the 51% shareholding of Essent/Deutsche Essent GmbH in swb AG as part of the completion of the RWE/Essent transaction
• Vattenfall, the Swedish energy group, on the €10.3bn acquisition of Dutch Nuon Energy
• Fortis Group on strategic sales of the group’s banking activities to the Belgian, Dutch and Luxembourg states and to BNP Paribas
• Sanofi-Aventis on the €2.8bn acquisition of Merck’s 50% interest in Merial
• Magnum Capital Industrial Partners, the largest Iberian private equity group, on the €1.15bn acquisition of Babcock & Brown’s wind assets in Portugal

The firm was short-listed for a further seven awards in the Benelux, Germany, Iberia, Nordic, UK, Private Equity and Mid-Market Legal Advisor of the Year categories.

For further information please contact
Sarah Peters on +44 20 7456 2153 / sarah.peters@linklaters.com or
Rupert Winlaw on +44 20 7456 3219 / rupert.winlaw@linklaters.com.