Redcliffe Partners acted as a legal counsel to the Saudi Agricultural & Livestock Investment Company (SALIC) in acquiring the assets of Mriya Agro Holding. This is one of the most anticipated and complex transactions in the Ukrainian agribusiness sector to date.

On 12 September 2018 SALIC (UK) Limited signed a share purchase agreement for the acquisition from Mriya Farming plc of the Mriya Group’s Ukrainian farming assets, including infrastructure facilities, machinery and land lease rights. The transaction remains to be approved by the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine.  The acquisition would increase SALIC’s presence in Ukraine, building on its existing operations (through Continental Farmers Group) in the L’viv and Ternopil regions.

Counsel Zoryana Sozanska-Matviychuk led the team. Zoryana was assisted by Anna Pushkaryova and Nataliya Kovalyova, both senior associates, associates Olesia Mykhailenko and Yulia Brusko, junior associates Anton Rekun and Bogdan Nykytiuk under the supervision of partners Dmytro Fedoruk and Rob Shantz. “Our experts have once again confirmed Redcliffe Partners as being the No.1 transactional law firm in the market. We are proud that such a large-scale deal, unprecedented both for Ukraine and Eastern Europe, has been completed due to our professional contribution,” stated Zoryana.

Redcliffe’s role included providing full legal support of the transaction from a Ukrainian law standpoint, covering due diligence of the Mriya Group and of its Ukrainian assets, and advice on pre-acquisition financial and corporate restructuring, transaction structuring, development of transactional documentation and obtaining Ukrainian antitrust approvals, as well as advice on related corporate, banking, and land law issues. One of the principal aspects of this acquisition was that Redcliffe also dealt with the debt restructuring documentation, performed due diligence of financing documents and advised on protection of the buyer's interests in the course of the target’s debt restructuring.

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SALIC UK (Saudi Agricultural and Livestock Investment Company, United Kingdom) is a Saudi joint stock company that is owned by the Public Investment Fund of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. Its statutes state that its activity is in the field of investment in agricultural and livestock production in countries that have a competitive advantage in contributing to the production of selected foods and their availability for export markets. The SALIC strategy focuses on twelve product categories: wheat, barley, corn, soybean, rice, sugar, vegetable oils, green fodder, red meat, milk products, poultry and aquaculture.

Mriya Farming PLC is the parent company of the Mriya Group, which farms 150,000 hectares in the Ternopil, Khmelnitsky, Chernivtsi, Ivano-Frankivsk, L’viv and Rivne regions. The Mriya Group operates four modern silos with a total capacity of 380,000 tons, a potato storage facility with a total capacity of 52,000 tons, a seed plant and a potato starch plant. It specialises in growing wheat, rapeseed, barley, sunflowers, soybean, corn, sugar beet, potatoes and other crops.