9 June 2021
Bird & Bird and AllBright advised CSSC Waigaoqiao Cruise Supply Chain Co., Ltd. ("CSSC Waigaoqiao"), a subsidiary of China State Shipbuilding Corporation Limited ("CSSC"), in its acquisition of Rheinhold & Mahla ("R&M") from Deutschen Beteiligungs AG, a German private equity fund. The transaction successfully closed on March 31, 2021.
This transaction is an important development in CSSC's involvement in large-scale cruise ship manufacturing projects. R&M has advanced concepts and deep expertise in the field of ship interiors, which will lay a solid foundation for CSSC's future large-scale cruise ship manufacturing projects heralding a new era for China’s large-scale cruise ship construction.
The €50m transaction, which took more than two years to complete, involved various jurisdictions including China, Germany, Finland, Norway, Singapore and India. AllBright acted as lead Chinese counsel, working with Bird & Bird’s German, Finish and Singapore offices to execute the international elements of the transaction. The project was officially launched in January 2019, with the share purchase agreement signed in July 2020 and the closing taking place in March 2021. During this period, Bird & Bird and AllBright lawyers participated in the design and assisted in the set-up of a practical transaction structure; worked together to conduct a detailed legal due diligence on R&M's key subsidiaries worldwide; assisted in the purchase of Warranties & Indemnities Insurance; participated in multiple rounds of negotiations with the counterparties to protect the client’s interest; drafted, reviewed and revised various transaction documents; assisted client in the pre-study and actual process of national security review, anti-trust filing and obtaining of other approvals in various countries in relation to the transaction; and followed up on the details of closing.
The Bird & Bird team was led by partner Dr Peter Veranneman (Dusseldorf) and counsel Dr. Ole Brühl (Hamburg), who managed a global team of over 20 Bird & Bird lawyers on the transaction including partners Rene Voigtländer (Munich), Guido Bormann (Dusseldorf), Stephan Waldheim (Dusseldorf), Marten Willamo (Stockholm), Katja Duncker (Helsinki) and Marcus Chow (Singapore). The AllBright team consisted of senior partner Wang Qinghua, legal counsel Shi Jiejing, and associates Zhang Wenyao and Sun Xiaomei.
CSSC was established on 1 July 1999 as a mega state-owned enterprise directly under the Central Government on the basis of the enterprises and public institutions under the former China State Shipbuilding Corporation and is a state-authorized investment institution directly managed by the Central Government. It is the main force in China's shipbuilding industry, which has gathered a number of the most powerful backbone shipbuilding and ship-repair enterprises, ship research and design institutes, ship-related enterprises and foreign trade companies under its umbrella.
R&M, founded in 1887, is a world leading supplier of ship interior services and materials, headquartered in Hamburg and Wismar, Germany, and is one of the leading equipment suppliers for naval ships, ferries and cruise ships in Germany.
For further information, please contact:
Matthew Laight, Partner, Bird & Bird
matthew.laight@twobirds.com
