Deals round-up - Germany

Ashurst Morris Crisp (David Kershaw) advised Global Freight Exchange in connection with an equity investment by British Airways, Air France and Lufthansa Cargo. British Airways was advised in-house, Clifford Chance advised Air France and Wilmer Cutler & Pickering advised Lufthansa.

Davis Polk & Wardwell (Patrick Kenadjian) advised Telekom Austria on the €55m (£34.9m) offering of its shares by Telecom Italia. Cerha Hempel & Spiegelfeld advised on Austrian law. The offering was underwritten by JP Morgan Securities and Merrill Lynch International, advised by Shearman & Sterling and Austrian law firm Binder Grösswang.

Linklaters (William Buckley) advised Liberty International on its placing of £159m of shares on the London Stock Exchange. The placing was underwritten by Morgan Stanley.

Wragge & Co (Anita Shah) advised Smiths Group on the £33m sale of its Lodge business to Meggitt. Meggitt advised by Ashurst Morris Crisp.

Norton Rose (Cheryl Ronaldson) advised Beazley Group on its initial public offering (IPO) and £167m listing. The Beazley listing is the first IPO by a Lloyd's group since the 1990s. Beazley has been trading since 1996 and manages Lloyd's Syndicate 623, underwriters of insurance and reinsurance businesses in speciality lines, property, reinsurance and marine.

Mayer Brown Rowe & Maw (Andrew Stewart) advised Unilever on a E1bn (£635m) deal with BT to manage and develop Unilever's entire global communications infrastructure. The firm worked alongside Unilever's in-house counsel James Berkeley. BT was advised in-house (David Eveleigh) and by Linklaters (Nicholas Butler).

Nabarro Nathanson (Derek Reynolds) advised Liberty International Group on its acquisition of shares in the Victoria Centre Partnership for approximately £204m from Baffin (UK). Baffin represented by Bryan Cave.