King & Spalding has advised Total System Services, Inc. (“TSYS”), a leading outsourced payment services company, on the acquisition of the 49-percent interest in First National Merchant Solutions (“FNMS”) held by First National Bank of Omaha (“FNBO”). The acquisition gives TSYS full ownership of the FNMS joint venture that was initially formed by TSYS and FNBO in April 2010, with TSYS acquiring the remaining 49-percent of FNMS for approximately $169.6 million. The transaction closed January 1, 2011.

On December 29, 2010, MSREF V Amber B.V., a company controlled by four closed-ended funds managed by the Morgan Stanley group (“Amber”), sold its 100% equity interest in Cinecity Arts and Cinemas S.r.l. (“Cinecity”) to The Space Entertainment S.p.A. Cinecity is active in the management of multiplex movie theaters, and The Space Entertainment S.p.A. is a joint venture between 21 Partners, a private equity fund managed by the Benetton family, and Mediaset, the media company controlled by the Berlusconi family.

Shearman & Sterling advised Essar Global Limited as sponsor and its subsidiary, Essar Steel Minnesota LLC (ESM), as project company in connection with the financing of their approximately $1.097 billion Integrated Iron Ore Pellet Plant Project in Northern Minnesota.

Shearman & Sterling is representing Greece’s fourth largest bank, Piraeus Bank S.A., on its €807 million rights issue. According to the terms of the rights issue the bank is offering existing shareholders 12 new shares for every five held. The offering is fully underwritten by a group of banks led by Barclays Bank, Credit Suisse Securities (Europe), Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley.

Mayer Brown JSM, a leading global law firm, is pleased to announce that it acted for Trinity Limited in its acquisition of Cerruti Holdings for a total consideration of not more than €52.58 million (HK$538.9 million).

The international law firm Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP, led by Global Project Finance partner Dan Bartfeld, represented BBVA, Banco Espírito Santo de Angola, Crédit Agricole and WestLB in the financing of two 40 MW run-of-the-river hydroelectric power plants to be owned and operated by Chilean renewable power firm HydroChile. The power generated from the projects will be sold in part to Chilean utilities AES Gener and Chilectra under long-term power purchase agreements.“The successful financing of these plants demonstrates the continued strength of the renewable energy sector to attract new capital,” commented Mr. Bartfeld. He further noted that “These projects show that well-structured projects continue to attract capital from the leading project finance banks — a trend we expect to continue in 2011.”

Steve L. Camahort, Jeffrey Wolf, Christopher S. Han, Joseph Berkowitz, Christine Huang, Laurence E. Crouch, Steven E. Sherman, Doreen E. Lilienfeld, Tina S. Patel, C. N. Wood, Anil Kalia, Zheng Bao, Meghan Moore, Kelly Karapetyan, Kevin H. Boon.