Vinson & Elkins and Machado Meyer advise on $5.16bn Sinopec deal

Vinson & Elkins fielded a multi-jurisdiction team that consisted of Shanghai-based partners Jay Kolb and David Blumental, UK partner Mark Coker and associates Nicholas Song, Tju Liang Chua, Nancy Tsui Chung, Jessica Yu, Yin Tingting, Tim Chandler and Daniel Allison.

The Machado Meyer team consisted of partners Ricardo de Lima Assaf and Leonardo Miranda alongside associate Maria Julia Florencio.

Galp Energia retained Linklaters as its external legal counsel. On the Brazilian side, partner Carlos Mello and associates Bruno Bercito and Paulo Guimaraes from Lefosse Advogados in cooperation with Linklaters all worked in tandem with partner Pieter Riemer and associates Anouk Oosterom and Gijs Smit from the firm’s Amsterdam office.

This is not the first time that Vinson and Machado Meyer have acted for the Chinese state-owned energy giant on a Brazilian deal, having both been retained by the oil giant in 2010 when it bought a 40 per cent stake in Repsol YPF Brasil for $7.1bn (£4.46bn). Latham & Watkins acted for Repsol on the deal (6 February 2012).

Vinson & Elkins is a long-standing adviser for Sinopec, having advised the energy major on acquiring Calgary-based oil and gas Daylight Energy for C$3bn last year (20 October 2011) and on its $8.8bn (£5.3bn) takeover of Addax Petroleum in 2009 (6 July 2009).

As reported in The Lawyer this week, Sinopec, which is listed in Hong Kong, New York and London following a $3.4bn H-share IPO in 2000, is reportedly planning to consolidate eight of its engineering and construction subsidiaries in preparation for a Hong Kong IPO in the coming years (26 March 2012).