June 20, 2008
German state of North Rhine-Westphalia, represented by Willkie, agrees to sell its residential property and project development company LEG to Whitehall Funds in the largest private equity transaction in Germany for the year 2008 to date.
On June 11, it was announced that the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia (NRW), represented by Willkie, agreed to sell its residential property and project development company Landesentwicklungsgesellschaft NRW (LEG) to Whitehall Funds for approximately €3.5 billion. This represents the largest private equity transaction in Germany for the year 2008 to date. In a highly competitive bidding process in which almost all international real estate private equity funds were involved, Whitehall, the real estate subsidiary of Goldman Sachs, won the bid. One of Germany’s largest residential property companies, LEG owns 93,000 units. Willkie has considerable experience advising on the privatizations of large residential real estate portfolios, including its 2006 representation of Fortress Investment Group LLC in the €1.75 billion acquisition of a portfolio of 43,000 city-owned residential units from the east German City of Dresden.
The NRW deal team, led by partner Jochen Winter (Corporate), comprised partners Dr. Michael Bernhardt (Corporate), Patrick Meiisel (Tax) and Sven-Erik Heun (Public Law); national partners Dr. Bettina Bokeloh (Tax), Rolf Hünermann (Competition/Commercial), Dr. Christian Rolf (Labor Law) and Valerian Jenny (Public Law); and associates Dr. Markus Käpplinger, Dr. Octávio de Sousa, Wolfgang Münchow, Ingo Bednarz, Frank Geißler and Heidi Landauer (all Corporate).
