Cleary, Freshfields act on Deutsche Bank’s bid for Deutsche Postbank
Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer have been handed lead roles in Deutsche Bank’s proposed takeover of Deutsche Postbank.
Ward Greenberg
Cleary is advising Deutsche Bank on a e9.8bn (£8.28bn) capital rights issue that will be used to fund the acquisition of retail lender Deutsche Postbank, which is being advised by Freshfields.
The rights are being offered publicly in Germany and the US and will trade in Frankfurt and New York.
Deutsche Bank will use the proceeds to buy out the remaining 70 per cent of the Deutsche Postbank shares.
The Frankfurt-based Cleary team acting on the deal is led by partners Ward Greenberg and Hanno Sperlich. It also includes partner Christof von Dryander and associates Stephen Benham and Felix Mueller. Deutsche Bank’s in-house team is being led by head of equity capital markets Andreas Meyer.
Deutsche Postbank has instructed Freshfields, with the firm’s team being led by Frankfurt partner Matthias-Gabriel Kremer.
Hanno Sperlich
The underwriters, which include UBS, Santander, Bank of America, Merrill Lynch, Commerzbank and HSBC, are being advised by Davis Polk & Wardwell London partners John Banes and Jeffrey Oakes, along with Hengeler Mueller Frankfurt partner Torsten Busch.
Deutsche Bank’s rights offering is the largest undertaken in Germany since Deutsche Telekom’s in 2000, a deal on which Cleary also represented the issuer.
It comes after global banking regulators in Basle set a new capital ratio for the world’s biggest banks, in some cases forcing them to treble the size of their capital reserves.
