Allen & Overy (A&O) secured this hotly contested award for its work advising on the highly complex $9bn (£6bn) deal to relocate OCI, Egypt’s largest listed company, to Amsterdam. A team of 55 lawyers, led by Middle East head of corporate Andrew Schoorlemmer, worked on the project in five jurisdictions. “The biggest deal of the year handled successfully,” said one of the judges.
The transaction saw A&O deploy a unique deal structure to secure the effective domiciliation of the Egyptian fertiliser and engineering conglomerate in the Netherlands. It involved the wholly owned subsidiary OCI NV making a bid for its ultimate listed parent OCI Egypt. The transaction featured two separate public takeover offers. There was a share exchange offer for London-listed global depositary receipts (GDRs) of OCI Egypt and a share exchange and mandatory cash alternative offer for Cairo-listed ordinary shares of the company.
