Global law firms Freshfields, Latham & Watkins, Kirkland & Ellis, Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton have steered an offer to take the Hong Kong-listed ESR Group private in a deal valued at $7.1 billion.
The consortium, led by Starwood Capital Group, Sixth Street, and SSW Partners, also includes QIA, Warburg Pincus, and ESR's founders, and currently holds 39.91 percent of the company's issued shares.
Additional equity commitments from institutional investors, including Alpha Wave Global and a leading Asia public pension investor, underscore the transaction's robust financial backing.
ESR shares have fallen in recent years amid China's property market slump. The stock is down more than 60 percent from a 2021 peak, while the Hang Seng benchmark has fallen about a third in the same period, according to Reuters.
The Freshfields team advising ESR Group on the transaction was led by partners Edward Freeman and Grace Huang and counsel Danny Li, with support from counsel Cindy Kwong, senior associate Dickson Chan, and associate Eric Cheung.
Partner Matthew O’Callaghan and associate Lu Feng advised on regulatory issues, counsel Stephanie Chiu advised on employment issues, partners Christine Laciak and Aimen Mir advised on U.S. law matters, and partner Alastair Mordaunt, counsel Laurent Bougard and associate Ziqi Zhou provided foreign investment and antitrust advice.
Latham advised the consortium with a team led by partner Amy Beckingham and Simon Cooke. Corporate partners Terris Tang, Richard Watkins, and Stephen Shi, counsel Michael Ning, and associates Bonnie Tse, Frances Yu, and Joanne Lao also assisted on the deal.
Specialist support came from partners across various practice areas, including Clare Scott on investment funds, Simon Hawkins and Farhana Sharmeen on financial regulation, Andrew Bishop on financing, Christopher D Frey on compliance, Helen Lethaby on tax, Max Hauser and Jana Dammann on antitrust matters, and Kendall Burnett and Sarah Gadd on employment issues.
Kirkland’s team advising the consortium was led by partners Joey Chau, Dan Borg, Lloyd Robertson-Jones, Annette Baillie, James Collins, Brian Ho, Andrew McAlpine, Nelson Ni, Tian Sun, Estelle Lu, Michelle Park, Art Ward, Paul Sampson, Matthew Jobson, Jonathan Schechter, Christopher Hartmann, Andrew Shiner, Sky Kim, and Satyen Dhana.
A Paul, Weiss team advised SSW Partners and was led by corporate partners Judie Ng Shortell and Bosco Yiu. The team included counsel Stan Richards, Arik Hirschfeld, and Caitlin Kelly; tax counsel Shane Milam; and litigation counsel Benjamin Klein.
The Cleary team advising Sixth Street was led by London partners Mike James and Dan Tierney.
