Supporting China Hongqiao on its strategic and complex joint venture

The Simandou mining project, located in the Republic of Guinea, Africa, is the world’s largest untapped high-grade iron ore deposit. A consortium of international joint venture partners including Rio Tinto, ChinalCo, Baowu, Winning International Group and our client, China Hongqiao, have come together to support the Republic of Guinea in developing this vast natural resource.

To support our client on this cross-border and highly complex strategic investment, we assembled a global cross-practice team involving our Hong Kong, London and Paris offices, among others.

The transaction was led by Hong Kong Corporate Partner Roger Zhou (Partner) with the support of Dickson Ng (Head of Corporate, Hong Kong), Charles Butcher (Managing Partner, Asia and Head of International M&A, Asia) and core team members Chaz Kittrell (Of Counsel) and Jenny Chen (Associate). From London, Alex Carver (Global Co-Head Energy & Infrastructure Finance), Caroline Clapham (Partner) and Peter Greenall (Legal Director) and from Paris, Olivier Le Bars (Partner), Sindhura Swaminathan (Partner), Célia Mayran (Counsel), Alix Fredet (Senior Associate), Alix Boudin-Gilles (Associate) and Oulématou Sy (Associate).

Roger Zhou commented:

“We are honoured to have had the opportunity to represent our long-term client, China Hongqiao, in completing this historically significant project. As a true one-stop full-service law firm, we advise our clients across a wide range of expertise and jurisdictions. We consider this transaction indicative of the complexity, scale, and quality of transactions we support our clients on, and we look forward to advising China Hongqiao and others’ in their future transactions.”

We are proud to have received this recognition from the Hong Kong legal community and intend to continue to build on this success through supporting our global clients’ cross-border legal services needs in this sector.