DLA, Dentons and Freshfields set to advise on high-speed rail deal

DLA Piper, Denton Wilde Sapte and Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer have secured key roles on the £7.5bn deal to manufacture a replacement fleet of intercity trains.

DLA Piper is advising the winning consortium Agility Trains – comprising Barclays, Hitachi and developer John Laing – which was last week selected as the preferred bidder to build the high-speed trains.

The firm is fielding a team led by infrastructure chief Mark Swindell – backed by partners including finance and projects partners Paul Hirst and Siddharth Sharma – on the transaction, which represents the largest investment in trains in the UK for a generation.

The contract will result in a fleet of up to 1,500 train coaches going into services between 2013 and 2018 on the Great Western and East Coast main lines.

Dentons has been instructed by National Express, which owns the InterCity East Coast rail franchise, with London energy, transport and infrastructure chief Christopher McGee-Osborne leading.

Freshfields was instructed by the Department for Transport (DfT), which launched its Intercity Express Programme in March 2007. London corporate partner Richard Phillips led the team for Freshfields.

As part of the contract Agility will build a new train manufacturing plant in the UK as well as depots in Bristol, Reading, Doncaster, Leeds and West London, with the DfT saying that the move would create or safeguard around 12,500 manufacturing jobs.

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