Legal Week: Slaughters leads adviser trio on Shell shake-up: UK head of legal Richard Wiseman told Legal Week: "We looked at a number of options, which we worked out first internally then with a number of outside advisers and banks." He added: "It is obviously friendly, but it is one of the biggest [transactions] ever affected." (ShellNews.net)

Posted 30 Oct 04

Slaughter and May, De Brauw Blackstone Westbroek and Cravath Swaine & Moore have won the lead roles on the Shell’s historic restructuring in what has been described as one of the UK’s biggest ever transactions.

All three firms have been working with the FTSE 100 oil giant providing UK, Dutch and US advice on the move that will see the combination of The Netherlands-based Royal Dutch and UK-based Shell to create Royal Dutch Shell.

UK head of legal Richard Wiseman told Legal Week: "We looked at a number of options, which we worked out first internally then with a number of outside advisers and banks." He added: "It is obviously friendly, but it is one of the biggest [transactions] ever affected."

Wiseman confirmed the change would only have a "small" affect on the company’s UK legal department as its general counsel Beat Hess is already based in The Hague, as are most of its in-house legal team.

The company expects to put the plan, which will create one corporate structure based in The Hague with a primary listing in London and secondary listings in the US and The Netherlands, to shareholders by May next year.

Author: Paul Hodkinson

Source: Legal Week

http://www.legalweek.com/ViewItem.asp?id=21953