Machado, Meyer, Sendacz e Opice Advogados represented Brazil’s Vale - the world’s largest iron mining company - as it increased its holding in German steel group ThyssenKrupp''s Brazilian steel slab plant project.
On 23 July, Vale announced that it had signed a memorandum of understanding with ThyssenKrupp under which it will pay €965 million (US$1.4 billion) to raise its stake in the SCA mill from 10 per cent to 26.87 per cent.
Machado Meyer’s Giovanni Biscardi, who led the team advising Vale, says, “Brazilian and German corporate governance structures work quite differently in practice, but both groups were sensitive enough to accommodate each other demands, in order to reach an appropriate set of rules to govern this ‘restructured’ relationship for the long term.”
The plant is expected to begin operations in the first half of next year, with a production capacity of capacity of 5 million metric tons of steel slab per year.
Vale will be the plant’s sole supplier of steel.
Biscardi says he was impressed by “the level of preparation of the business teams from both sides negotiating the terms of the deal.”
This, he says, presented “a great opportunity for the lawyers to contribute their expertise and to put sophisticated and well-planned business concepts into place.”
Counsel to Vale
• In-house counsel - Karin Kern and Rogério Teixeira dos Santos
• Machado, Meyer, Sendacz e Opice Advogados
Partner Giovanni Cardoso Leite Biscardi and associate Mariana Coelho Castello
Counsel to ThyssenKrupp
• In-house counsel - Walter Knickenberg and Jürgen Strunck
(Latin Lawyer 27.07.2009)
(Notícia na Íntegra)
