Herbert Smith Freehills advises on Petershill Partners' £4 billion London IPO

Leading international law firm Herbert Smith Freehills has advised Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and JP Morgan, as well as UBS and BNP Paribas as joint bookrunners on Petershill Partners' £4.0 billion initial public offering on the Premium segment of the London Stock Exchange. Petershill's total market capitalisation at the commencement of conditional dealings was approximately £4.0 billion, which equates to a total offer size of £1.2 billion. 

The Herbert Smith Freehills team was led by corporate partners Michael Jacobs, Nigel Farr and Tim West, supported by US securities partner Dinesh Banani, of counsel Dennis Hermreck and senior associates Thomas Vaughan and Shantanu Naravane.

Petershill Partners are a leading alternative asset manager which owns minority stakes in alternative asset managers with a combined US$187 billion of assets under management.

Nigel Farr commented that:

"This transaction demonstrates our unrivalled ability to deploy a multidisciplinary team leveraging our market leading funds and equity capital markets practices which enables us to deliver these kinds of complex, market leading equity capital markets transactions."

Michael Jacobs also said:

"It has been a privilege to be able to advise our clients on what is a unique transaction, combining all the elements of traditional equity capital markets and listed funds. This is another marquee transaction for the HSF equity capital markets team in 2021."

This follows a series of high profile equity capital markets mandates in 2021 for Herbert Smith Freehills, including easyJet's £1.2 billion rights issue, the US$4 billion rights issue by Tryg to fund its participation in the takeover of RSA and capital raises for FTSE 100 companies The Weir Group and Severn Trent.