M&A and Securities Practices Claim Top Spot
August 13, 2008, Sarbanes-Oxley Compliance Journal

White & Case has been ranked the top advisor for global buyout by deal volume by Mergermarket in its table of Legal Advisers to Global M&A for the first quarter of 2008.  The Firm has also been ranked number one by deal value as issuer adviser on US equity offerings and on US and global initial public offerings in Bloomberg’s first quarter 2008 Americas and Global Legal Advisor Tables.

The Firm's global presence attributed to its standing in the M&A tables.  "While there was a significant drop in global buyout activity in the first quarter, especially large leveraged deals in the US, the breadth and depth of our worldwide private equity practice resulted in a successful first quarter," said John Reiss, a partner at White & Case in New York and co-head of the Firm’s Global Mergers & Acquisitions and Private Equity Practice.  "Our private equity, as well as our strategic practice, combines expertise in more than 25 different countries with unrivaled cross-border cooperation among our offices."

White & Case advised on two record-setting offerings in the first quarter of 2008.  The first was the $19.7 billion initial public offering of Visa, Inc., the largest IPO in history.  The second was Canada Housing Trust and Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation’s sale of $11 billion in Canadian government-backed Canada Mortgage Bonds.  It was the largest Canadian bond issuance and one of the largest AAA bond offerings by an entity other than the US government to date.

"The Visa deal was precedent-setting due not only to its size but also its scope and complexity.  While the IPO offering and listing were made in the US and on the New York Stock Exchange, we also worked on concurrent offerings in Japan and Canada," said Mark Mandel, a lead partner on the Visa deal, along with S. Ward Atterbury, in the Firm’s Mergers & Acquisitions Practice in New York.

"Taking into the account the restructuring work that preceded the IPO and that involved our M&A, Antitrust, Tax and Intellectual Property Practices, the deal spanned 20 offices in more than 170 legal jurisdictions," said Atterbury.