Linklaters, Slaughters on £1.78bn Standard Chartered rights issue

Slaughter and May and Linklaters have sewn up the lead roles in Standard Chartered's £1.78bn rights issue to existing shareholders.

A Slaughters team led by corporate partner Nilufer von Bismarck advised Standard Chartered.

Von Bismarck commented: "They are one of the few banks that can still do rights issues, Santander is another example, and interestingly they are all banks that are not participating in any government scheme."

Just today, Barclays shareholders had approved the injection of £7.3bn by Middle East investors, bypassing existing shareholders pre-emption rights (TheLawyer.com, 31 October). Allen & Overy, Clifford Chance and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer had acted on that transaction.

Partner William Buckley led the Linklaters team acting for Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek, which is Standard Chartered's biggest shareholder and underwrote part of the rights issue.

Matthew Middleditch bagged the role advising the other underwriters JPMorgan Securities Ltd, UBS Limited and Goldman Sachs International.

Last year, Lovells had advised Temasek in its purchase of £1bn of Barclays shares (TheLawyer.com, 30 July 2007).

Slaughters' von Bismarck was assisted by associates Stuart Whitty, Andrew Salisbury James Hutchinson and Louise Campbell and trainee Harriet Redwood. Pensions and employment partner Eddie Codrington also advised, with partner Jeanette Zaman providing tax advice, assisted by associate James Hume.

Slaughters Hong Kong partner Laurence Rudge advised in Asia, assisted by associate Celine Koh.