A wrap of the past weeks’ major deals and their advisers, featuring all the usual suspects plus Rajani, LexCounsel, Prism, HSB, SJ Law, Travers, Nabarro, DLA and more…

Capital markets: Rights issue

Nabarro London partners Alasdair Steele and Ian Binnie with senior associate Ben Macdonald and associate Sarah Melaney advised Hyderabad-based biofuel producer Nandan Cleantec Plc on its initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange’s Alternative Investment Market (AIM), raising £16.1m for a £166.1m valuation. DLA Piper Birmingham-based partner John Campion advising Arden, the nominated adviser (Nomad) and placing agent on the IPO.

Prism Partners had acted for IDream Film Infrastructure Company on it's rights issue before its merger with Naik Naik & Co.

Projects

Laware Associates partner Rajat Malhotra advised the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI) on the four-laning of two expressways: the Ranchi-Rargaon-Jamshedpur section of NH-33 with a project cost of Rs 1655 crore, and the Barasat-Krishnagar Section of NH-34 with a project cost of Rs 980 crore. Lenders’ counsel in both projects was SJ Law.

Copyright

Naveen Goel Law Offices partner Naveen Goel represented Pine Labs against Gemalto in a software copyright case in the Delhi High Court. Gemalto had approached Pine Labs to outsource the development of a software for Indian Oil Corporation in 2004. The copyright in the software was assigned to Gemalto although territory and duration were not specified and Pine Labs filed for copyright infringement after a period of five years. The court held that under Section 17 of the Copyright Act, Pine Labs was the creator of the work and the first owner of the copyright in the work, and if the agreement of assigment was silent on the duration and territory of assignemnt, the period would be for five years and presumed to extend within India under sections 19(5) and 19(6) of the Act.[Judgment Pine v Gemalto]

Corporate M&A

LexCounsel partner Seema Jhingan with senior associate Chanda Sheemar and associate Abhijeet Das advised Laurus Edutech Life Skills on the investment by National Skill Development Corporation India (NSDC) in a Rs 53.60 crore project to train 1.11m employees over the next 10 years in various skilled labour sectors over 546 training centres. Seth Dua partner Vasanth Rajasekaran represented NSDC. [Business Standard]

Khaitan & Co advised chemicals manufacturer Kilburn Chemicals (KCL) that sold its chemicals division for around $22m to VV Titanium Pigments, which was advised by HSB Partners partner Srinath Sridevan. The Khaitan team was led by partner Haigreve Khaitan, director Ketan Kothari, partner Bhavik Narsana and executive director Dinesh Kumar Agrawal.

Khaitan & Co partner Rajat Mukherjee assisted the Japanese consulting firm Nomura Research Institute (NRI) on its acquisition of 25.1 per cent in Indian market research company Market Xcel Data Matrix. Mori Hamada Matsomoto partner Chisako Takaya was the Japanese counsel on the transaction.

Luthra & Luthra represented Hi-Rel Electronics, which saw an equity investment by Hitachi that has renamed the company to become Hitachi Hi-Rel Power Electronics. Luthra partner Bikash Jhawar, senior associate Amit Shetye and Associate Rohan Shah advised Hi-Rel, while Khaitan & Co acted for Hitachi.

Khaitan & Co partners Vaishali Sharma and Zakir Merchant solely advised on Hitachi India’s joint venture agreement with SFO Technologies to incorporate a new company to provide system engineering and system integration for information control system of social infrastructure and industrial systems.

Rajani Associates managing partner Prem Rajani and associate Karishma Jumani advised the founders and employee shareholders of Indiagames, which sold out their 30.2 per cent stake to The Walt Disney Company through its recently acquired Indian subsidiary UTV Software Communications. UTV was represented by AZB & Partners partner Shuva Mandal and associate Archana Rajaram – the same team that acted on the original $454m buyout of UTV by Disney.

Milbank Tweed partner Stuart Harray advised Sahara India Pariwar, which invested $100m in Vijay Mallya’s Force India Formula 1 (Force India) team, with Mallya and Force India advised by Travers Smith partner Andrew Gillen. Sahara and Mallya will each be 42.5 per cent stake co-owners in Force India alongside the Mol family.

Competition law

The Delhi offices of three firms acted for airlines in their case against travel agents alleging they abused their dominant position. Amarchand Mangaldas principal associate Naval Chopra advised Singapore Airlines, Luthra & Luthra partner GR Bhatia for Lufthansa and Austrian Airlines, with Pasrich & Co partner Amir Pasrich advised NorthWestern Airlines. The travel agents had alleged that the airlines had colluded by removing the 5 per cent commission from travel agents in favour of charging transaction fees. The director general and the Competition Commission of India (CCI) found no evidence of collusion in a 13-page order, according to a lawyer representing one of the airlines. Luthra’s team also included managing associate Ravisekhar Nair and senior associate Karan S Chandhiok and associates Nidhi Singh and Vikram Sobti.

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