Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer and Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton are advising on alliance talks between Indian mobile telecoms company Reliance Communications and African wireless company MTN Group.

The pair, which between them have more than 116 million customers and combined annual revenues of around £7.3bn, announced that they were in exclusive talks about a possible merger late last month (26 May).

Freshfields' Dubai-based Middle East and North Africa (MENA) chief, Bruce Embley, is co-leading the team advising MTN, alongside London telecommunications, media and technology head Ben Spiers.

The deal is the latest in a line of instructions the magic circle firm has won from MTN, with Freshfields previously acting on deals including MTN's $5.5bn (£2.97bn) acquisition of Dubai-based Investcom in 2006.

Reliance, meanwhile, turned to New York leader Cleary. Paris-based M&A partner Pierre-Yves Chabert is leading the team advising the company.

Reliance Communications, which is part of the wider Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group, is one of the largest mobile phone companies in India and has more than 48 million customers.

Cleary has previously advised other parts of the company on deals including the $2.93bn (£1.48bn) initial public offering of Reliance Power earlier this year, which was thought to be the biggest of its kind in India to date.

Reliance has also instructed Indian firm Amarchand & Mangaldas & Suresh A Shroff & Co, as well as South African firm Edward Nathan Sonnenbergs, where chairman Michael Katz is leading a team out of Johannesburg.

South African firms Werksmans and Webber Wentzel Bowen are providing local advice to MTN.

Commenting on the talks, Chabert told Legal Week: "The combination of MTN and Reliance would be a landmark transaction in emerging markets, creating the largest telecoms company to come out of such markets. It would be bigger than AT&T in terms of number of subscribers."

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