Linklaters Advises on First Chinese Acquisition in Argentina’s Financial Sector

Linklaters has advised on the third major China outbound M&A transaction into Argentina and the first one in the financial sector.

Linklaters advised Industrial and Commercial Bank of China Limited (ICBC) which entered into an agreement to acquire 80% of each of Standard Bank Argentina S.A., Standard Investments S.A. Sociedad Gerente de Fondos Comunes de Inversion, and Inversora Diagonal S.A. from Standard Bank Group of South Africa and certain members of the Werthein and Sielecki families for an estimated cash consideration of US$ 600 million.

This is another example of the firm’s impressive ability to handle complex cross border transactions within tight time-frames: the deal was signed in just over three months from initial instructions, an extremely short period of time for Latin American deals.

Linklaters’ China and Latin America teams from its Beijing, Shanghai, Hong Kong, New York, London, Madrid and Tokyo offices were involved in this transaction. The teams included English, Mandarin and Spanish speakers across the firm’s corporate, banking, competition, tax and IP practices.

Lead Beijing partner Thomas Ng said:

“This transaction is a continuation of Linklaters’ track record in advising ICBC, the world’s largest bank by market capitalisation, on the vast majority of its international M&A transactions since 2007. Our track record with ICBC also includes the US$5.5 billion acquisition of a 20% stake in Standard Bank Group Limited in 2007 and the public takeover of ACL Bank in Thailand in 2010.”

Notes to Editors

• Linklaters LLP is a leading global law firm, supporting clients in achieving their strategies wherever they do business. We use our expertise and resources to help clients pursue opportunities and manage risk across emerging and developed markets around the world.
• Linklaters is a recognised market leader for advice on public takeovers, cross border and multi jurisdictional mergers and acquisitions, joint ventures, disposal and other corporate advisory matters and capital markets issues. Our clients are drawn from a broad base including the FTSE 100, Fortune 500, DAX 30, CAC 40 corporates, private equity houses, investment banks and governments.
• Linklaters was ranked number one in Asia (ex. Japan) by Mergermarket for H1 2011 M&A league table rankings.