Allen & Overy (A&O) secured this hotly contested award for its work advising on the highly complex $9bn (£6bn) deal to relocate OCI, Egypt's largest listed company, to Amsterdam. A team of 55 lawyers, led by Middle East head of corporate Andrew Schoorlemmer, worked on the project in five jurisdictions. "The biggest deal of the year handled successfully," said one of the judges. 

The transaction saw A&O deploy a unique deal structure to secure the effective domiciliation of the Egyptian fertiliser and engineering conglomerate in the Netherlands. It involved the wholly owned subsidiary OCI NV making a bid for its ultimate listed parent OCI Egypt. The transaction featured two separate public takeover offers. There was a share exchange offer for London-listed global depositary receipts (GDRs) of OCI Egypt and a share exchange and mandatory cash alternative offer for Cairo-listed ordinary shares of the company. 

The high-profile transaction also saw new investors, including Bill Gates, committed to subscribe for new shares in OCI NV to provide funding for the cash alternative in respect of the offer for the Cairo-listed shares. 

The result was OCI NV's successful listing in January on Euronext Amsterdam. Not only was the deal conducted to a tight timetable of seven weeks from inception to announcement, it also took place against a backdrop of an extremely challenging regulatory and political environment in Egypt. The team advised on all aspects of the transaction, including tax structuring, the takeover offers, the Amsterdam listing and the investment arrangements with the new investors.