Fenwick & West represented the buyer group, consisting of a consortium of leading Chinese private equity firms and Shanghai Giant Network Technology Co., Ltd. ("Giant"), one of China's largest online gaming companies, in the recently announced definitive agreement between the consortium and Caesars Interactive Entertainment, Inc. (“CIE”) to acquire CIE’s social and mobile games business, Playtika, in an all-cash deal for $4.4 billion. Playtika is the creator of top-grossing ranked free-to-play games, such as Slotomania, House of Fun and Bingo Blitz.
The consortium includes an affiliate of Giant, Yunfeng Capital (a private equity firm founded by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. founder Jack Ma), China Oceanwide Holdings Group Co., Ltd., China Minsheng Trust Co., Ltd., CDH China HF Holdings Company Limited and Hony Capital Fund. The transaction is subject to customary regulatory approvals and other closing conditions, and is expected to close in the third or fourth calendar quarter of 2016. More information about Giant’s acquisition of CIE’s Playtika unit can be obtained from the company press release.
The Fenwick transaction team included US-based corporate lawyers Mark Stevens, David Michaels, Ken Myers, Scott Behar, Bomi Lee, Stephen Fisher, James Li and Elizabeth Chang; Shanghai-based corporate lawyers Niping Wu and Sawyer (Mengyuan) Li; intellectual property lawyers Stephen Gillespie, Jonathan Millard and Michael Riskin; trademark lawyers Sally Abel, Mark Jansen and Deborah Kang; antitrust lawyer Mark Ostrau; executive compensation and employee benefits lawyers Scott Spector, Gerald Audant, Marshall Mort, Patrick Grilli and Alex Galev; and tax lawyers David Forst, Larissa Neumann and Sophia Huang.
With this acquisition, Fenwick has represented the top three largest-ever mobile gaming acquisitions in history, including representing Supercell Oy in its recent $8.6 billion stake acquisition by Tencent and King Digital in its recent $5.9 billion acquisition by Activision Blizzard.