CAM, TTA, JSA bag biggest inbound M&A ever: Russians’ $13bn Essar Oil buy [UPDATE-2]

Saturday, 15 October 2016 By Legally India Corporate M&A

“The acquisition is the biggest foreign acquisition ever in India and Russia’s largest outbound deal. Billionaire brothers Shashi and Ravi Ruia have agreed to sell 98 per cent of Essar Group flagship firm Essar Oil to Russian oil major Rosneft and a consortium of oil trading firm Trafigura with private investment group United Capital Partners for $13 billion, making it the largest foreign direct investment in India.” reported The Hindu and others.

Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas managing partner Cyril Shroff and partners Amita Choudary Katragadda, Ravi Kumar and Anchal Dhir acted for Essar with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer acting on non-Indian law elements of the deal.

The Cyril Amarchand team also included New Delhi-based tax partners S.R. Patnaik and Mekhla Anand, and Mumbai competition law partners Bharat Budholia and Anshuman Sakle, and New Delhi- and Mumbai-based dispute resolution partners, Percival Billimoria, Indranil Deshmukh and Kapil Arora, and Mumbai- and New Delhi-based finance partners L. Viswanathan, Pranav Sharma, Dhananjay Kumar and Jatinder Cheema, and New Delhi-based IP partner Ranjan Negi.

Talwar Thakore & Associates partner Kunal Thakore, managing associate Tejas Adiga, and associates Raghuveer Parthasarathy and Shivangi Paranjpe together with Vinod Dhall, competition law executive chairman and managing associate Sonam Mathur and associate Avinash Amarnath, advised Rosneft on Indian law aspects of the deal.

Linklaters acted for Rosneft on non-Indian laws, led by corporate partner Savi Hebbur with Grigory Gadzhiev, Satindar Dogra, Mathew Plaskow, Sushil Jacob, Yohan Liyanage, Sarah Lindley, Philip Richardson and Preeya Takhar.

J Sagar Associates (JSA) partners Sandeep Mehta and Srabonee Roy, together with Slaughter and May advised the Trafigura-led consortium.

Update 1: JSA acted for Trafigura.

Update 2: Added full CAM and Linklaters team.

To be updated with full team details.

Comments

This is Huge 15 Oct 2016, 14:57

+1 -1

This is a huge transaction, many other key people were involved in this transaction especially in CAM. Kian, please get the name of all the people involved.

SAM or CAM 15 Oct 2016, 15:24

Heard that JSA advised trafigura on Indian law aspects of the deal

EmilyRatajkowski 15 Oct 2016, 16:24

+23 -0

[img]http://i.imgsafe.org/2578a4f56b.png[/img]

Lexpert 15 Oct 2016, 19:10

+4 -0

Cyril advised on the CDR of Essar Oil and hence was poised to take this one! I daresay it won't really be much of Foreign Direct Investment into India as the money will go to the Ruias, who I am sure will move it offshore very quickly. Smart work!

You Naive 16 Oct 2016, 04:48

+4 -1

This transaction is mainly about debt. Essar Oil has reported debt of 80000 crore thats where the money is going. This is FDI enough

Awesome 16 Oct 2016, 04:38

+7 -4

Any one who has been involved in the deal knows that JSA had very small role in the transaction. The transaction was mainly run by Freshfields, Links and CAM. As they were representing main parties Essar and Rosneft.

BULLSHIT 4 Feb 2017, 09:46

+1 -0

CAM barely had any role.

MS Word 16 Oct 2016, 09:20

+4 -24

Surprised to see Luthra's name not feature in a deal of this size. Must be conflicted.

Cheap shot 16 Oct 2016, 12:34

+10 -2

This comment is clearly aimed at inviting adverse comments on Luthra. It is common knowledge that Luthra (specially the Delhi office) does not do much of high profile transactional work (no less because of the spate of mid level exits and general lack of experience and skilled resources). The counsel working in Luthra accept as much and have no problem with this. Enough with the cheap shots.....we are what we are and we are quite comfortable with it. At Least, we treat our people fairly and equally.

musical chairs 26 Oct 2016, 16:10

+0 -0

last year, luthra was involved on the deal and were thrown out coz Essar didnt like them much. so CAM did the CDR, were poised to do the deal, which was given to Luthra, who couldnt keep it and so back to CAM it went.... what fun!!

Guest 16 Oct 2016, 12:44

+10 -1

LOL

MS excel 16 Oct 2016, 14:11

+4 -6

Possible. Another m&a powerhouse missing from this transaction is AZB. Unusual for Sai/ Gautam/ Anil or Vaibhav/ damini's name to not feature here. Possible that even a bigger deal in the pipeline?

PPTX 16 Oct 2016, 17:56

+5 -4

Is Damini hiring for her team? I have heard that she is an amazing mentor

Mr & Mrs Smith 16 Oct 2016, 18:14

+6 -1

Bass karo yaar. Stop this mischievous suggestion that there are no other M&A partners in Luthra. It's insulting and so not cute.it would be interesting to know if this has the sanction of the powers that be.

Deep Tea 16 Oct 2016, 19:13

+3 -4

You seem like the jealous one

Intl deal 16 Oct 2016, 10:04

+6 -8

Another deal done by intl law firms and Indian firms with little involvement busy claiming credit.

Angst 17 Oct 2016, 04:41

So much jealousy.

Musharraf 26 Oct 2016, 16:18

I think we have found the next Propagandist for ISI - YOU!!! we agree with you - India claims credit for no reason.

dr. mrs. srivastava 16 Oct 2016, 16:59

+6 -3

katragadda? amita choudhary has changed surname after marriage? always saddens me when smart women do that.

Disppointed 16 Oct 2016, 20:00

+3 -3

Even more disappointing is your feminist approach towards things. Amita is a woman who is a partner in one of India's top firms and you have ignored that and decided to comment on her surname. Sick!

Guest 17 Oct 2016, 10:09

She was always a Katragadda

Teg 16 Oct 2016, 17:36

+3 -0

Even Sam is missing. No Shardul or Akshay or shuva on this. Although sam require two- three more big faces in corp to stay for long in the market.

Truth & Dare 17 Oct 2016, 06:38

If someone does some fact checking, the initial deal and most of the legal work was completed by July 2015, when CAM was not where it is today. The other fact that can be easily checked is that the deal was sourced for JSA by Akshay Chudasama. It's good for two ailing firms to get some publicity based on a delayed closing, but that's all that is. A third fact, Amita's name was always Katragadda, nothing to do with her marriage. Finally it's interesting to see Amita doing M&A again, what with her joining as a litigation partner.

FBD v PP 17 Oct 2016, 05:19

+2 -0

Just curious as to how FBD didnt take on PP for this deal. I thought that there was best friends arrangements in place. Holds good for LL and TTA

Congratulations 17 Oct 2016, 05:29

+6 -2

Good job Srabonee. TTA has been doing good work but surprised that only name of the partner is mentioned. Can we have the name of all the associates who contributed to the deal?

SAM or CAM 17 Oct 2016, 06:52

+2 -4

Competition teams of TTA & JSA would have worked hard on this. Overlapping products.

Catty 17 Oct 2016, 07:13

Kian what is your (official and unofficial) policy on revealing IP address of commentators? It would be good to know.

kianganz 17 Oct 2016, 07:45

+5 -0

Officially, we don't. Unofficially, we also don't. :) Hope that's clear. Why?

Gazaaab 17 Oct 2016, 08:41

+0 -1

Hahahahahaha good one, Kian.

Yanna Rascala 17 Oct 2016, 08:49

I hope everyone here at least understands that the transaction is not in the nature of a foreign direct investment.

S&M-JSA 17 Oct 2016, 13:17

+1 -3

Slaughters and JSA have been doing some big transactions lately. First the RCOM-Aircel merger and now this. Kudos.

Scooter- 18 Oct 2016, 09:09

why isnt Ravi Kumar's name not on the disclosure?

AMSS Alum 18 Oct 2016, 09:27

CAM was always bound to get this transaction. Cyril, LV and Bhojani have worked on Essar matters through thick and thin. It's like trying to take Reliance orMax away from AZB.

For the CAM haters, this should prove that CAM isn't going to shrivel up overnight. No doubt they're on a downward trend (with rumours of bigging up their role in matters) but Cyril, LV, Bhojani and Yash are still there and still formidable.

For the CAM lovers, getting all the work that Kotak or Essar do doesn't really prove overall competence. Gagrat used to be the sole firm working for Jet Airways, and MS Kanga used to be the same for Reliance. Did this one relationship make them the number one firms?

Scooter- 20 Oct 2016, 18:44

i agree. ESSAR is cams only client.

Yeekada 22 Oct 2016, 10:44

They can keep them also and CAM will forever be working capital creditors to Ruias

Irony 18 Oct 2016, 11:43

You review the whole data room or a couple of agreements, but you do your clerical admin work properly, ur name will appear in the deal team.

Credit misplaced.

Yeekada 19 Oct 2016, 16:44

This is very true for JSA. This what the entire team did on the deal - clerical work and no where involved on discussions of documents

Deal Table 18 Oct 2016, 13:51

+2 -1

Congratulations to all those involved. This certainly a feather in their cap. This is going to move the deal table like anything on deal value. Certainly deal of the year.

Fragile Feathers 18 Oct 2016, 17:41

A feather that might be deserved by only certain individuals of all the above mentioned firms.

The other people should voluntarily write to Kian so that their names can be removed or else it really saddens the lawyers who actually toiled.

Disclosure: I have not worked on this deal but my friend has who is saddened to see certain names.

Gazaaab 20 Oct 2016, 09:17

In JSA, only two ppl worked on deal, not bad???

Yeekada 22 Oct 2016, 10:43

How many more people do you need for reading DD reports

Poor Associate 26 Oct 2016, 16:23

spare a thought for the real deal team. most of the partners mentioned here did jack shit of work. deal was led by Amita and Anchal, with assistance from capable associates like Preksha and Anindita. many ppl chipped-in in bits and pieces. but CAM will only show case the partners. not the ppl who actually worked.... why??

Ghonshu Ram 27 Oct 2016, 14:43

Yes I know. How much did jack shit?

Chota Corp lawyer 28 Oct 2016, 05:41

CAMS is the best firm for CDR.. Dealt with them personally in 2 transaction very good negotiators.. Debt is fairly different from Equity and has more compliance in comparison to Equity at times.. JSA's uncrowned King Sandeep may have been a figure heads and must have just made a noise about their small roll. TTA has a very good competition head Mr. Dahl.. very knowledgeable.....

Seems an interesting deal to work on i so wish i was on it...

Commenting is closed for this article.