O&B has consolidated its position at the top of the rankings. The firm has risen quickly and made significant inroads in reshaping the legal market in Ghana in terms of instituting modern firm practices....
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O&B has consolidated its position at the top of the rankings. The firm has risen quickly and made significant inroads in reshaping the legal market in Ghana in terms of instituting modern firm practices. It has an office in London and is very foreign investor friendly.
"It is probably up there with Bentsi-Enchill," says one client, "one of the two firms that we go to, they have the added advantage of having a presence in London and our colleagues there find it very easily administratively. Most banks use these two firms as well".
The firm has had another strong year, increasing its turnover by about 50% and advising a number of new clients including JPMorgan (through Clifford Chance), RBS, Venture Capital Trust Fund, Anglogold Ashanti and Och-Ziff Capital Management Group. It also started to expand its projects team.
In significant recent financings, Elikem Kuenyehia advised Société Générale in $70 million of financing, guaranteed by Exim Bank, to the Ghanaian government for equipment for the national fire service and the acquisition of a jet and with Amina Kagua, acted for three separate global financial institutions on large loans to public and private Ghanaian entities for stock market, infrastructure and energy related investments. The firm also advised Chase Petroleum on a derivatives transaction with BP Oil.
In M&A, the firm clinched come very large mandates, among them acting for a global oil company on the sale of 70% of its local subsidiary, a public but unlisted company. It was the first time such a company had to comply with public takeover rules. The firm also advised American Tower Corporation on all aspects of its $350 million acquisition of the tower business of a major telecommunications company in Ghana. In other work, the firm assisted Standard Chartered on its acquisition of the custody assets of Barclays Bank Ghana.
On the projects side, headed by Sadia Chinery-Hesse, the firm advised Standard Bank of South Africa on a $60 million loan to Gold Fields Ghana for mining equipment acquisition, a syndicate of international lenders including the African Development Bank, Ecowas Bank for Infrastructure and Development and Société Générale on a $32 million loan for the construction of the Kempinski Hotel in Accra, and Standard Bank on a $30 million bridge loan to Ghana National Petroleum Corporation.
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