Milbank Tweed Hadley & McCloy and Slaughter and May have taken lead roles on the estimated £2bn sale of Abbey’s train leasing arm Porterbrook to a Deutsche Bank-led consortium, in one of the largest leveraged acquisitions of the year in the London market.

Milbank scored the lead role for the acquiring consortium, including Deutsche bank, Lloyds TSB and Antin Infrastructure Partners – a BNP Paribas-sponsored infrastructure fund. The US firm fielded a team out of its London office under corporate partner Stuart Harray, along with finance partner Suhrud Mehta and tax partner Russell Jacobs.