Kirkland & Ellis and Morrison & Foerster have the lead roles on an $11.6 billion offer from Chinese investors to take Singapore-based warehouse operator Global Logistic Properties Ltd. private.
A consortium led by Chinese private equity firms Hopu Investment Management and Hillhouse Capital Group, property developer China Vanke Co., Bank of China Group Investment and GLP chief executive Ming Mei is offering to privatize Singapore Exchange-listed GLP at $2.47 apiece in one of the largest buyout deals in Asia.
GLP was co-founded in 2007 by Mei and Jeffrey Schwartz, and focuses on the e-commerce-fueled growth of the logistics sector in China. (Schwartz died in 2014.) The company manages $41 billion in assets in China, Japan, Brazil and the United States.
Kirkland & Ellis is advising the consortium with a Hong Kong-based team led by corporate partner Nicholas Norris, finance partner David Irvine and investment funds partners Justin Dolling and Jonathan Tadd.
Morrison & Foerster, longtime adviser to GLP, is once again advising the warehouse company on the privatization proposal. The team is led by Singapore-based Asia managing partner Eric Piesner and fellow Singapore partner Shirin Tang. They are supported by funds partner Kenneth Muller in San Francisco and corporate partner Marcia Ellis in Hong Kong.
Singaporean firm Allen & Gledhill is serving as legal adviser to a special committee at GLP.
Hopu and Bank of China first bought into GLP in 2014; they jointly took a minority stake through GLP's Chinese subsidiary. MoFo's Piesner and Ellis both advised GLP on that deal. The pair, alongside Muller, also represented the company on setting up a $7 billion China-focused fund in 2015.
GLP started a strategic review in November on the request of shareholder GIC, the Singaporean sovereign wealth fund, and in January began reaching out to potential bidders for privatization. The winning consortium trumped a group led by Warburg Pincus and its logistics subsidiary e-Shang Redwood Group. GIC announced that it supported the proposal by the Hopu-Vanke consortium.
The deal has already obtained approval from the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, according to a media release put out by GLP. The deal is expected to complete in April 2018.