Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas advised Essar in relation to the sale of its entire stake in certain ports and power infrastructure assets to ArcelorMittal Nippon Steel India Limited (AMNSIL), for an aggregate amount of USD 2.4 billion. As part of the transaction:
1.Essar Ports & Terminals Limited, Mauritius, has sold to AMNSIL certain ports assets of Essar, viz Essar Bulk Terminal Limited (owner of a 25 MTPA jetty at the all-weather, deep draft bulk port terminal at Hazira, Gujarat) and Essar Bulk Terminal Paradip Limited (owner of a 12 MTPA deep-water jetty at Paradip, Odisha along with a dedicated conveyor that handles 100% of pellet shipments from AMNSIL);
2. Essar Power Limited has sold its entire stake in Essar Power Hazira Limited, which owns a 270 MW multi-fuel power plant at Hazira;
3.Essar Ports Limited and Essar Power Limited have executed definitive agreements for sale of: (i) 100% stake in Essar Vizag Terminals Limited (owner of a 16 MTPA all-weather, deep draft terminal at Visakhapatnam, Andhra Pradesh); (ii) a 515 MW gas-based power plant of Essar Power Limited, along with allied land; and (iii) the entire stake of Gandhar Hazira Transmission Limited, which, at closing shall own 100 KM Gandhar – Hazira transmission line; and
4.Essar and ArcelorMittal, through their group companies, have entered into a 50-50 Joint Venture partnership, for building a 4 MTPA LNG terminal at Hazira, Gujarat.
The General Corporate, Project & Project Finance, Dispute Resolution, Taxation and Competition Law practices of Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas advised the Essar Group on the transaction.
The Transaction team was led by Amita Katragadda, Partner, Preksha Malik, Partner, with support from Neham Tayal, Principal Associate, Prakhar Pandey, Principal Associate, Radhika Shukla, Associate and Ashima Sharma, Associate.
The General Corporate advisory team was led by Akila Agrawal, Partner (Head – Mergers and Acquisitions), Smruti Shah, Partner, with assistance from Aviral Chauhan, Principal Associate, along with Shreya Teewari, Associate.
The Financing team was led by L. Viswanathan, Partner (Chair – Finance, Projects & Insolvency), Subhalakshmi Naskar, Partner, with support from Anand Deshpande, Principal Associate, Sukriti Sarwan, Principal Associate Designate and Sahithi Uppalapati, Associate.
The Dispute Resolution team was led by Amita Katragadda, Partner, Anuradha Mukherjee, Partner, Shikha Tandon, Partner, with assistance from Prakhar Pandey, Principal Associateand Shuchita Choudhry, Senior Associate.
The Projects team was led by Santosh Janakiram, Partner (Head-Projects), Ramanuj Kumar, Partner, Vivek Rathore, Partner with support from Nitin Gupta, Director – Projects & Infrastructure, along with M Shivraman, Senior Associate, Mayank Udhwani, Associate, Janani Chandrasekaran, Associate, Pragya Dubey, Associate and Madhurima Singh, Associate.
The Real Estate team was led by Ashish Jain, Partner, with support from Siddharth Iyer, Associate.
The Tax team was led by SR Patnaik, Partner & Head Taxation with support fromThangadurai V.P, Principal Associate.
The Competition team was led by Avaantika Kakkar, Partner (Head – Competition Law), Dhruv Rajain, Partner with support fromAakriti Thakur, Associate.
Other Parties and Advisors to the transaction included Trilegal and Shardul Amarchand Mangaldas (acted as legal advisors for AMNSIL), Price Waterhouse Coopers (acted as financial advisors for Essar), KPMG (acted as financial advisors for AMNSIL), Deloitte Haskins & Sells LLP and Ernst & Young (acted as tax advisors for Essar), Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan, UK, Debevoise & Plimpton UK & US, Sue Prevezer Kings Counsel, Brick Court Chambers (advised on US and/or English law related aspects).
The transaction was signed on August 26, 2022.
About Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas
Cyril Amarchand Mangaldas (cam) is India’s leading law firm with a global reputation of being trusted advisers to its clients. The Firm advises a large and diverse set of clients, including domestic and foreign commercial enterprises, financial institutions, private equity and venture capital funds, start-ups, government and regulatory bodies. The Firm generalists, specialists and senior ex-regulators expertly guide clients across a spectrum of transactions, sectors and regulations. With 1000 lawyers and 160 Partners, the Firm is the largest full-service law firm in India and offices in key business centres at Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad, Hyderabad, Chennai, GIFT City and also in Singapore.
The Firm recently received “Innovation in Advancing Markets” award at the FT Innovative Lawyers Asia Pacific 2022 Awards and the “National Law Firm of the Year: India” award at the IFLR Asia Pacific 2022 awards ceremony. The Firm had won “India Deal Firm of the Year” at the ALB India Awards and “Firm of the Year” at the IFLR1000 India Awards in 2021.
