DLA Piper Advises Intertek on £450 Million Moody Acquisition

Tuesday, March 8, 2011
Tags:  DLA Piper
DLA Piper has advised Intertek Group plc (‘Intertek’) on its £450 million acquisition of Moody International (‘Moody’) which was announced today.

Intertek has entered into a conditional agreement to acquire Moody for a consideration of £450 million on a cash-free and debt-free basis. Intertek is funding the acquisition entirely in cash from new and available debt facilities. 
The DLA Piper team advising Intertek was led by Corporate partners Noel Haywood, John Campion and Charles Cook, together with solicitors Nigel Cooke and Mike Jackson, all based in Birmingham.  Rothschild is acting as financial adviser to Intertek. 
The acquisition also involved DLA Piper teams from London, San Paulo, Baltimore, Milan, Moscow, Paris, Frankfurt, Beijing, Tokyo and Dubai providing assistance on due diligence, employee consultation and anti-trust matters. 
The deal is conditional upon competition clearances in Germany, Russia and the US. It is anticipated that these clearances will be obtained by the end of April and the transaction completed immediately after. 
Intertek is a leading international provider of quality and safety services. Moody is a leading worldwide provider of quality and safety services to the global energy industry. It also provides systems certification services to the manufacturing, construction and service markets. Moody is headquartered in Haywards Heath, UK, and employs approximately 2,500 people in 80 offices and 60 countries. Together Intertek and Moody will have a leading technical services platform in Intertek’s sector of the global energy market. 
Mike Marshall, Vice President of Corporate Development at Intertek, commented: “This deal marks an important stage in the development of Intertek and we are pleased to have done it with DLA Piper.” 
Noel Haywood, partner at DLA Piper in Birmingham, continued: “Intertek are a highly valued client of DLA Piper so we were thrilled to be able to help them with this strategic acquisition. 
“This acquisition is a first class example of DLA Piper’s unrivalled ability to carry out high value multi-jurisdictional transactions to a tight timescale to produce a great result for the client.”