A team of Bath-based corporate advisers have helped the UK subsidiary of a French firm with a major acquisition that involved complex cross-border negotiations.
The corporate and commercial team at law firm Royds Withy King, tax advisers at Bishop Fleming and specialist technology merger and acquisition (M&A) advisers ICON Corporate Finance advised on the takeover of Bristol-based cloud specialist Applicable by Arkadin.
Arkadin, one of the world’s largest and fastest-growing providers of unified communications (UC) and collaboration services based in France, is itself a subsidiary of Japanese-owned NTT Communications Corporation.
The international dimension brought extra challenges to the deal, according to Royds Withy King Bath partner Katharine Mortimer, pictured right.
“This was an exciting and complex deal to work on with several international elements,” she said.
“In addition to its Bristol office, Applicable has a US subsidiary and an Australian branch so there were some interesting legal and tax issues to consider.
“We worked closely with Applicable’s shareholders on the share sale agreement, new articles and shareholders agreement which will see our clients become shareholders in the UK company.”
Bishop Fleming Bath-based tax partner Paul Morris, pictured below, added: “It was great to be part of the local team advising on this transaction and there were inevitably some complexities to resolve along the way.
“The acquisition of Applicable will no doubt generate exciting opportunities for the combined businesses.”
ICON director Simon Moynagh said “We ran a full international M&A process and are delighted to have secured Arkadin /NTT Communications as the acquirer. Unified Communications is a rapidly growing market and this represents a significant deal for the sector.”
Applicable has a 12-year track record of successfully building, implementing and managing cloud-based Microsoft Lync and Skype for Business on behalf of large enterprises.
Applicable’s expert team already hosts more than 330,000 unified communications users through its ISO/IEC 27001:2013-certified global private cloud platform.
The acquisition will enable Arkadin to expand its global reach and bring the value of unified communications services to large and global companies.
Applicable managing director Alan Baldwin said: “We are thrilled to be joining Arkadin and are certain it will benefit all stakeholders, including our talented workforces and current and future customers.
“Our combined resources and shared passion for enabling organisations to collaborate, will successfully deliver integrated Microsoft UC services that meet the essential quality of experience requirements of enterprise customers.
“Arkadin’s global telephony and local approach to service, together with Applicable’s expertise, offer customers a complete UC service.”
Arkadin was advised by the Paris office of Travers Smith and Sentio Corporate Finance.
