The New Lawyer reports that Clayton Utz and Allen & Gledhill LLP have confirmed they are acting on the proposed merger between the Australian Stock Exchange and the Singapore Exchange. It is understood Freehills is also involved in the deal.
Here’s what the New Lawyer says
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Clayton Utz is acting as legal advisers to Singapore Exchange (SGX) on its proposed merger with ASX Ltd via scheme of arrangement, announced today.
It is understood Freehills is advising the ASX.
Allen & Gledhill LLP are the Singapore legal advisers for the SGX.
The ASX went into an unexpected trading halt on Friday as rumours swirled about a possible takeover bid and merger with the Singapore Stock Exchange.
Shares in the $8 billion Singapore Stock Exchange also halted.
Clayton Utz Corporate partners Rod Halstead and Karen Evans-Cullen are the firm’s lead partners, with banking partner Alex Schlosser advising on the financing of the transaction.
Under the Scheme terms, ASX shareholders will receive a combination of cash (AUD$22.00) and scrip (3.473 new ordinary SGX shares) for each ASX share.
The combined exchange group, ASX-SGX Limited, will have a market capitalisation of approximately AUD $16 billion at the current bid price. ASX and SGX will remain separate legal and locally regulated entities.
Commenting on the deal, Rod Halstead said: “This is an important transaction which represents the first merger of exchanges in the Asia-Pacific region in a period of significant structural change in global financial markets. It also
continues Clayton Utz’s strong track record of inbound cross-border M&A transactions.”
Foreign investment specialists, meanwhile, doubt the $8.4 billion merger will receive regulatory approval in its current form, ABC News reports.
Emin Altiparmak, a senior associate in mergers at Allens Arthur Robinson, told ABC News the Australian Foreign Investment Review Board is like to closely examine whether the merger could lead to resources and jobs moving offshore.
?I think it is fair to say they will take a much closer look at the transaction,? he said.
?And given the nature of FIRB being a political process and the fact that there is another government involved,? I think they will take a much closer interest.?
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Here’s what the Australian Newspaper has to say on the proposed merger
FRIENDLY mergers are often born of deep necessity or genuine opportunity.
Yesterday’s formal announcement of the $8.4 billion deal between the Australian Securities Exchange and the Singapore Exchange (SGX) had a flavour of both and was certainly assisted by a long association between the two CEOs.
Singapore Exchange chief Magnus Bocker and ASX CEO Rob Elstone go back at least a decade, when the latter headed the Sydney Futures Exchange.
Back then Bocker was running OMX, a Scandinavian exchange operation that had started out as a technology company and was selling services to Elstone’s SFE.
Bocker, whose native habitat was Stockholm, was flogging the SFE a derivatives clearing system called Secure.
But while the two CEOs profess to have met often in the past 10 years and discussed the prospect of exchange consolidation each time, it didn’t get serious until a few months ago.
In Singapore, the Morgan Stanley-advised SGX established Project Stargate — which also happens to be the name of an amusement park on Orchard Road — and in Sydney, UBS-advised ASX began work on Project Avatar.