Skadden, Simpson head up $2.5bn UBS Brazil sale

Skadden Arps Slate Meagher & Flom and Simpson Thacher & Bartlett have taken lead roles on the $2.5bn (£1.7bn) sell-off of UBS's Brazilian financial services business to BTG Investments.

M&A partner Alan Myers led the Skadden team advising BTG, alongside partners Paul Schnell and Sally Thurston.

The elite US firm is connected to BTG by Jon Bisgaier, a former Skadden partner who left the firm last year to join BTG in Brazil, which is led by several high-level executives formerly of UBS's Brazilian unit, Banco Pactual.

Simpson Thacher corporate partner Gary Horowitz advised Banco Pactual on the deal, which was agreed in the space of one week.

Myers said: "It was as pleasant to work on as any deal done in such a compressed time frame."

"We are deal junkies," said Horowitz, "and this is like getting our fix."

Under the terms of UBS's 2006 purchase of Banco Pactual, the Swiss bank still owed several rights and obligations to members of BTG, said Horowitz. It was unclear what to do with those obligations now that the BTG executives were buyers rather than sellers, meaning the lawyers had to take the obligations one by one and sort them out, said Horowitz.

"That's what made for some intensive lawyering here," he says.

Skadden represented Banco Pactual on its 2006 sale to UBS, and Simpson advised UBS on that acquisition.

UBS, which has written down about $50bn (£34bn) in losses, is looking to raise capital and cut its workforce in order to save money.

This article first appeared on The Am Law Daily blog on americanlawyer.com.

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