Weil Gotshal & Manges has picked up the latest mandate from GE Capital, as it sells $32bn (£28.8bn) of assets to Mayer Brown client Wells Fargo & Co in a bid to reduce the size of its financial business.

The assets include GE Capital’s commercial distribution finance business, as well as its vendor finance and corporate finance platforms. 

The company turned to US firm Weil Gotshal, whose core team was led by corporate partners Bill Gutowitz and Jon-Paul Bernard. They were supported by fellow New York partners Joseph Verdesca, Charan Sandhu and Randi Singer, working on insurance, IP and privacy issues respectively. 

Tax partners Kenneth Heitner and Chayim Neubort were also involved, along with environmental partner Annemargaret Connolly and structured finance partner Frank Nocco. Partner Samuel Zylberberg and counsel Elliot Ganchrow handled real estate issues, while counsel Steven Margolis looked after employee benefits matters. 

Weil Gotshal additionally fielded a London team led by partner Mike Francies. Francies headed the effort in Europe, with assistance from banking partner Reena Gogna. 

Financial services company Wells Fargo meanwhile turned to Mayer Brown corporate partner Elizabeth Raymond in Chicago. She was supported by fellow US corporate partners Nina Flax and Rebecca Eisner, while partner Kate Ball-Dodd offered assistance from London.

Banking partners Ger O’Donnell, Brian Newhouse and John Clark were also involved, while Debra Hoffman, Stefan Martin, Hong Tran and Guido Zeppenfeld offered employment benefits advice in the US, London, Hong Kong and Frankfurt respectively.

Additional legal counsel was provided by IP partner Rich Assmus, tax partner Lee Morlock and financial services partners Jeffrey Taft and Mark Compton.

The deal, which is expected to be completed at the start of 2016, is GE Capital’s largest transaction to date as it continues to reduce the size of its business. Since April it has signed more than $126bn in transactions, with its franchise finance unit still remaining for sale in the US. 

Background to the deal 

GE Capital first announced plans to dispose of most of its financial assets in April 2015, with GC Alex Dimitrief overseeing the sales. Dimitrief is now set to replace Brackett Denniston as GE’s legal chief when the latter retires at the end of 2015. 

The first sale was the disposal of its $26.5bn (£18.07bn) real estate division to Blackstone Group and Wells Fargo, with the latter turning to Dechert for legal counsel.   

Hogan Lovells represented GE Capital on its real estate sale, with Weil Gotshal being called upon for counsel in June on the sale of its fleet business for $6.9bn (£4.4bn).

Following on from this, Clifford Chance advised the company on the $2.2bn (£1.4bn) sale of its European sponsor finance business to Sumitomo Mitsui Banking Corporation Europe.