Munich — Kirk­land & Ellis is advi­sing cable network opera­tor Tele Colum­bus on a public take­over offer by Kublai GmbH, a bidding company of Morgan Stan­ley Infra­struc­ture Partners.

Kublai has announ­ced its inten­tion to acquire Tele Colum­bus for 3.25 euros per share. The accep­tance period for the offer is to be six weeks. Subject to regu­la­tory appr­ovals, the take­over offer is expec­ted to be comple­ted in the second quar­ter of 2021. The main condi­ti­ons of the offer are a mini­mum accep­tance thres­hold of 50 percent, waivers by bond­hol­ders and credi­tors of termi­na­tion rights due to change of control in suffi­ci­ent numbers, and regu­la­tory approvals.

An extra­or­di­nary share­hol­ders’ meeting of Tele Colum­bus on Janu­ary 20, 2021 is also expec­ted to approve a rights issue in the amount of EUR 475 million, which will be guaran­teed by Kublai.

As the anchor share­hol­der, United Inter­net AG supports the take­over bid and has announ­ced its inten­tion to contri­bute a mino­rity stake of around 29.90 percent to the bidder company if the take­over bid is successful. — The take­over bid was prece­ded by a multi-stage bidding process initia­ted by Tele Columbus.

Advi­sors to Tele Colum­bus: Kirk­land & Ellis Munich

Dr. Achim Herfs (Corporate/M&A, lead), Wolf­gang Nardi (Finance), Dr. Anna Schwan­der (Capi­tal Markets), Tim Volk­hei­mer (London, Capi­tal Markets); Asso­cia­tes: Vanessa Schmie­ding, Ange­lina Seel­bach (both Corporate/M&A), Dr. Tamara Zehen­t­bauer (Capi­tal Markets) and Fabrice Hipp (Finance)

Advi­sor United Inter­net: Henge­ler Mueller

Part­ners Dr. Daniela Favoc­cia, Dr. Lucina Berger (both Lead, Corporate/M&A), Dr. Wolf­gang Groß (Corporate/ECM) and Dr. Johan­nes Tieves (Finan­cing) as well as Asso­cia­tes Dr. Jan Häller, Dr. Arvid Morawe (both Corporate/M&A) (all Frank­furt), Mauritz Rogier (M&A) and Dr. Cars­ten Bormann (Public Commer­cial Law) (both

About Kirk­land & Ellis
With more than 2,700 lawy­ers in 15 offices world­wide, Kirk­land & Ellis is one of the leading inter­na­tio­nal commer­cial law firms. The Munich team provi­des focu­sed advice in the areas of private equity, M&A, corpo­rate, capi­tal markets, restruc­tu­ring, finan­cing and tax law.