The net proceeds of the rights issue will be used to partly fund the cash consideration needed by AVEVA to acquire OSIsoft.
AVEVA will also issue consideration shares worth approximately £0.5 billion, based on the current AVEVA share price, to a company majority owned by OSIsoft's founder, Dr J. Patrick Kennedy, who will be appointed as Chairman Emeritus of AVEVA following completion of the acquisition.
The Ashurst team was led by corporate partners Karen Davies and Stuart Rubin, supported by counsel Ethan Perry, senior associate Hayley Gow, associates Jake Hadfield, James Powell, Demi Pham, Colin Bugler, Krishna Parikh and Aaron Koh, and trainees Anxin Hua, Ben Pearson, Saxon Norgard and Roshni Mehra. Senior consultant Jeffrey Sultoon also advised.
Partners Tim Rennie, Nicholas Moore, Michael Neary and Brenton Key also provided banking advice with support from counsel Nichola Shaw, senior associates Darren Phelan, Briony Holcombe and Misha Daha, associates Chloe Abbott, Shafeen Janif and Mike Gorski, and law clerk Ana Namaki.
Competition advice is being provided by partners Neil Cuninghame, Steven Vaz and Ross Zaurrini, senior associates Laura Carter, Tom Punton and Rowan Kendall and associates Natasha Gromof, Victoria Beswick and Pablo Velasco. Partners Bruce Macdonald and Rafael Baena also advised. Incentives advice was provided by senior consultant Nicholas Stretch and senior associate Rebecca Servian. Partners Alexander Cox, Tim Gummer and Sharon Kim advised on tax matters with support from associates Shayaan Zaraq Bari, Martin Voelker and Laura Burt. Partner Crowley Woodford, counsel John Gordon and associates Imene Hamdi-Cherif and Ela Olejnik advised on employment and pensions aspects, with partner David Wilkinson, senior associate Don McCombie, and legal analyst manager Jessica Whitfield advising on IP matters. Digital economy partner Christopher Bates also advised with support from associates Harry Newton, Adam Eskdale, Aimi Gold and Tom Brookes.
Karen Davies commented:
"AVEVA is a longstanding client of the firm, and we are very pleased to be assisting them with this significant transaction, currently the largest announced rights issue in the UK in 2020. We have been advising AVEVA for a number of years, importantly through their combination with Schneider Electric in 2017, and in their US$5 billion acquisition of OSIsoft announced in August this year - two hugely strategic moves for the company which have played an important role in reinforcing their position as a global leader in engineering and industrial software, accelerating the digital transformation of the industrial world and promoting sustainability."
