Michelmores’ Emerging Markets team has been ranked by Legal 500 for its Emerging Markets investment work, alongside global firms such as Latham & Watkins, Debevoise Plimpton, Charles Russell Speechly, and Berwin Leighton Paisner. Legal 500 commented on the team’s ‘open, accessible, pragmatic and commercial’ lawyers, and made particular mention of the firm’s ‘very strong Africa team’.
Legal 500 is one of the leading independent directories of law practices in the UK and independently reviews the practices of more than 1,000 UK law firms, teams and individuals, and the work that they have undertaken over the last 12 months.
Led by Joe Whitfield (formerly General Counsel of CDC, the UK Government’s Development Finance Institution, and who has more than 20 years’ experience working in the emerging markets), Michelmores’ Emerging Markets team has considerable cross border expertise, representing a broad range of clients (including private equity firms, development finance and other financial institutions, and impact investors) investing in some of the most challenging jurisdictions. Recent jurisdictions that the team has worked in include Sierra Leone, Mozambique, Rwanda, Cambodia, Laos, Mongolia, the Philippines and Mexico.
Joe Whitfield commented,
“This is the first time that the team has submitted an application to Legal 500, so we are delighted that our emerging markets work has been recognised. Our practice continues to grow and we have enjoyed a very busy 2015 to date, working across diverse and exciting jurisdictions including Mozambique, Nigeria, Tajikistan, Thailand and Zimbabwe”.
Recent work includes:
- Advising private equity fund manager Phatisa on the African Agriculture Fund’s acquisition of a majority stake in Meridian, a $250m revenue Pan-African agribusiness operating out of 7 jurisdictions
- Advising Finnfund and FMO (the Finnish and Dutch Development Finance Institutions) on their $30m joint debt facility to New Forests, a Pan-African sustainable forestry group
- Advising three separate funds managed by Triodos Investment Bank on their sale of a significant minority equity stake in ACLEDA Bank Plc (Cambodia’s largest commercial bank) to ORIX Corporation of Japan
- Advising Bamboo Finance, a global private equity group, on its Series B Investment in BBOXX Limited, a designer, manufacturer and distributor of solar powered battery packs throughout the developing world
- Advising Finnfund and Norfund (the Finnish and Norwegian Development Finance Institutions) on their multi-$m joint debt facility to a hydropower company that owns and operates hydropower projects in Laos