Paul Hastings’ London M&A Team Continues Strong Run of Telecoms and Infrastructure Deals

June 01, 2020

London – Paul Hastings’ M&A team in London has advised on a number of deals in recent months, despite significantly lower transaction volumes caused by the COVID pandemic and market uncertainty.

Today, the firm announces that it is advising eir, the leading Irish telecommunications company, on the €300 million sale of Emerald Tower Limited to Phoenix Tower International. Emerald Tower Limited owns over 650 wireless towers across Ireland. Paul Hastings also advised on the long-term master services agreement to be entered into between eir and Emerald pursuant to which Emerald will acquire further newly constructed wireless towers across Ireland over the next 8 years through a build-to-suit programme, and will provide eir with hosting services for its active mobile network equipment for a long term period. The transaction is expected to close in early summer 2020.

The Paul Hastings team was led by London corporate partner Garrett Hayes, with senior associate David Prowse and associates Sam Waite and Aimée Fabri.

The same Paul Hastings team is also advising Salt Mobile on the creation of a special purpose vehicle, Swiss Open Fiber, along with Sunrise Communications to deploy a substantial fibre-to-the-home (FTTH) network in Switzerland, in partnership with a financial sponsor. The deployment will add an incremental 30-35% FTTH coverage in Switzerland, taking FTTH coverage in rural areas to 60-70% of households. The overall cost of the project is estimated to be CHF3bn, comprising build, connection and activation costs.

In addition, on 31 March, the firm also advised Monaco Telecom On its €250 million acquisition of Vodafone Malta from Vodafone Group which closed on 31 March. This comes shortly after the firm advised Brookfield Business Partners on the merger of two fuel storage and distribution portfolio companies, Greenergy and BG Fuels in February and Jacobs Engineering on the £250 million acquisition of Wood Nuclear, part of John Wood Group which completed in March 2020.

These transactions illustrate the recent growth in Paul Hastings’ telecoms and corporate infrastructure practice in London since the arrival of infrastructure specialist, Steven Bryan, last year. This growth is set to continue with a number of deals in the pipeline.

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