Davis Polk, Slaughters lead as Mastercard buys UK payment provider
Firms land key roles as US-based card issuer buys majority stake in UK's VocaLink for £700m
July 25, 2016 at 08:43 AM
2 minute read
Davis Polk & Wardwell and Slaughter and May have won the lead roles on MasterCard's acquisition of UK payments company VocaLink.
The US-based cards issuer struck a £700m deal last week to buy a 92% stake in VocaLink, which is owned by a group of 18 banks and building societies. These include Lloyds Banking Group, Barclays, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander.
Davis Polk is advising MasterCard with a team led by London corporate partner Will Pearce, which also includes New York corporate partners Jeffrey Crandall and Pritesh Shah and litigation partner Angela Burgess, alongside London tax partner Jonathan Cooklin.
The New York firm advised MasterCard last year on its $600m (£457m) acquisition of cloud-based analytics firm Applied Predictive Technologies.
Slaughters is advising VocaLink with a team in London headed up by corporate partner Rebecca Cousin, alongside M&A head Roland Turnill. IP and IT partner David Ives, tax partner Jeanette Zaman, head of pensions Jonathan Fenn, corporate partner Victoria MacDuff, real estate partner Jane Edwarde and finance partner Azadeh Nassiri are also advising.
The magic circle firm previously advised VocaLink in April on the separation of its LINK network of cash machines from VocaLink. Its team on that deal was also led by Cousin.
Earlier this month, litigation boutique Quinn Emanuel Urquhart & Sullivan announced plans to launch a £19bn class action against MasterCard on behalf of British debit and credit card holders.
The action, which Quinn Emanuel said it expects to file in a specialised competition tribunal in late July or August, will be the largest case by far under a year-old UK law that expands the ability of private parties to seek collective redress for violations of UK competition law.
The sale of VocaLink was the second major international takeover of a UK company announced last week, following the UK's vote to leave the European Union in late June. It comes just days after Japan's SoftBank agreed to acquire UK technology group Arm Holdings for £24.3bn.
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