Clifford Chance, Hengeler Mueller advice on Bayer's sale business

Clifford Chance, Hengeler Mueller advice on Bayer's sale business

The CC will have teams in the US, UK, France and Germany as part of a Transatlantic carve-out deal

UK private equity firm Cinven on the acquisition of pharmaceutical giant Bayer's pesticide division for $2.6 billion is a deal which is being handled by Clifford Chance and Hengeler Mueller.

The deal, which is set to close in the second half of 2022, is being handled by CC on behalf of Cinven, while Hengeler Mueller is advising Bayer.

Due to the deal's carve-out nature and geographical reach, CC called for a multi-jurisdictional and multidisciplinary team combining private equity, merger and acquisitions, antitrust and equity and debt capital markets in Germany, the US, UK and France.

Matthias Hentzen and Martin Ulbrich, who work in Düsseldorf, lead the team at Hengeler Mueller. Their team includes eight other attorneys including company lawyer Christian Wentrup, tax lawyers Matthias Scheifele and Gunther Wagner, employment lawyer Christian Hoefs, antitrust lawyer Thorsten Mäger, finance attorney Henning Hilke, and regulatory attorney Dirk Uwer.

The team at Clifford Chance is led by corporate and private equity leaders drawn from the offices of the Magic Circle firm in Frankfurt, London and New York. There are partners Jörg Rhiel, Anselm Raddatz, Jonny Myers, Kevin Lehpamer, Gunnar Sachs and Mark Aschenbrenner in the company.

Rhiel described the transaction as involving global leaders in their respective fields in several geopolitical jurisdictions. "Our client, Cinven, needed a mixture of regulatory, commercial and transactional legal expertise, which we were happy to provide to them."

In addition to their respective law firms, both firms have obtained a large team of corporate counsel and associates to work on this deal.

According to Cinven, BESP will keep an open relationship with Bayer following the completion of the acquisition to maintain the company's commitment to environmental, regulatory and employee stakeholder responsibilities.

It is Cinven's largest acquisition in the agricultural sector since it bought the Spanish horticultural firm Planasa for €450 million in 2017.

"As a long-established global investment firm, Cinven is well positioned to drive further innovation at Environmental Science Professional. It includes the development of digital and data-enabled solutions and to make the business more agile-based on their unique needs." "We are delighted to make this investment with Cinven," said Pontus Petterson, partner and head of industrial at Cinven.

With over 800 employees across offices in France, Germany, Brazil, Japan, Australia, Canada and the UK, BESP moved its US headquarters to North Carolina in 2019. In addition to pest control, vector control, vegetation management, forestry and ornamentals, environment solutions are provided by the company.