Shanghai/Berlin—Global law firm Dentons advised the listed Chinese company Zoomlion Heavy Industry Science & Technology Co. on the 100 percent takeover of the construction engineering company m-tec Mathis Technik GmbH, a subsidiary of the French Saint-Gobain group. The transaction is expected to be completed in Spring 2014.

In Germany, m-tec has several hundred employees in Neuenburg am Rhein, Baden-Württemberg. For Zoomlion, one of the largest construction machinery manufacturers in China, this is the first investment in Germany. This transaction is evidence of the growing trend of Chinese companies investing in the German industry. It follows the recent acquisition by Zoomlion of the Italian Compagnia Italiana Forme Acciaio SpA (CIFA), a transaction which is used by Harvard Business School for teaching purposes.

The Dentons team – under the leadership of Dr. Hermann Meller (Partner) and Dr. Daniel Barth (Counsel) – consists of lawyers not only from the German offices, but also from the Dentons London, Prague and Shanghai offices. The cross-border team was in charge of all major transaction legal issues on the buyer's side and, together with Zoomlion, took a decisive step towards the realization of a very demanding and complex M&A transaction.

The successful transaction is a credit to Dentons’ global expertise: For many years, Chinese clients have been relying on the advice of the firm’s polycentric teams for cross-border mandates. As a recent example, Dentons (at that time Salans) advised Goldrooster AG, a German subsidiary of the Chinese Goldrooster group, on its IPO on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange.

Advisor Zoomlion
Dentons (Shanghai): Dr. Hermann Meller (Partner, Corporate/M&A, lead)
Dentons (Berlin): Hauke Thieme (Partner, Tax), Dr. Daniel Barth (Counsel, Corporate/M&A, lead), Dr. Josef Hainz (Counsel, Competition), Dr. Maria Brakalova (Senior Associate, Regulatory Affairs), Dr. David Lange (Associate, Real Estate), Dr. Jan Scharfenberg (Associate, Competition)
Dentons (Frankfurt): Dr. Constantin Rehaag (Counsel), Valeria Hoffmann (Associate, both IP)
Dentons (Prague): Jan Procházka (Counsel), Jitka Hořáková (Associate), Daniela Stabrawa-Saranová (Associate, all Corporate/M&A)

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