IFLR 1000
The Guide to the World's Leading Financial Law Firms

On September 1 2011 LMR and Peltonen Ruokonen & Itäinen Attorneys-at-law merged to form Peltonen LMR. LMR itself used to be ranked in tier four for capital markets and only time will tell where the new firm will go.

In legacy LMR, Antti Niemi handled the bulk of the firm's capital markets work, with the support of partner Ilona Teräkivi, senior counsel Heikki Koponen and associate Ville Kulju.

LMR was relatively active on the regulatory side of the markets, and recently advised on a French bank on the on the capacity of Finnish investment funds to enter into repurchase transactions and close-out netting provisions, several Finnish institutions on ISDA master agreements and another French bank on filing Ucits (Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities) funds in the Finnish Finance Supervision Authority

LMR merged in September 2011 with Peltonen Ruokonen & Itäinen to form Peltonen LMR. The lead partners for corporate and M&A work at legacy LMR were Petri Morelius and Ilkka Leppihalme, supported by a team of associates.

The firm acted for a mix of different clients in M&A transactions and one of its top deals saw Leppihalme advise North European Oil Trade (NEOT) and its main shareholder SOK in its acquisition of the fuel procurement operations of Shell in Finland. Another large deal saw Morelius advise a Canadian individual in connection with the sale of a stake in holding company of RMT Robotics to Cimcorp and a subsequent acquisition of 20% of the shares in Cimcorp.

Elsewhere, the firm was engaged by private equity firms. Among them was Pontos Group, which the firm advised on a €20 million equity investment through a directed share issue in Valmet Automotive.