Clifford Chance (CC), Allen & Overy (A&O) and Latham & Watkins have advised on the €680m (£566m) acquisition of John West parent company MWBrands by Thai Union Frozen Products (TUF).

CC acted for TUF with a team led by corporate partner Kathy Honeywood alongside finance partner Jim MacHale and antitrust partner Greg Olsen.

A&O advised the underwriters, which included Credit Agricole, Mizuho, Standard Chartered and Sumitomo, with a team jointly led by banking partners Greg Brown and Sanjeev Dhuna alongside finance partner Adrian Mellor and capital markets counsel Nicolas Steichen.

Latham advised MWBrands, fielding a team led by M&A partner Thomas Forschbach.

Honeywood (pictured) said: "The Thai Union deal is a testament to the quality of the cross-border work in our corporate practice, with lawyers from a number of jurisdictions advising on the transaction.

"The good news is that this is one of many deals emerging: it's exciting to see M&A activity beginning to pick up again."

MWBrands – which was previously owned by Trilantic Capital Partners, the former buy-out arm of Lehman Brothers – is one of the leading European companies in tuna products with a portfolio including John West, Petit Navire and Mareblu.

A&O's Brown said: "We've seen increasing interest from Asian investors in acquiring assets in Europe. This is a trend we expect to continue as confidence slowly builds in the market as Asian companies find themselves having avoided the worst of the fallout from the global financial crisis."

Completion of the transaction is subject to shareholder approval and an antitrust review.

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