Baker & McKenzie recently acted for Sinopharm Group Co. Ltd. (“Sinopharm”), China’s largest pharmaceutical products distributor, on its new H Share placement raising approximately HK$3.4 billion.  Sinopharm issued an aggregate of 138,056,825 H Shares at a placing price of HK$25 per H Share.  The net proceeds will be used for the expansion of Sinopharm’s pharmaceutical distribution and retail network as well as for liquidity replenishment.

The Baker & McKenzie team was led by Shanghai-based securities group partner Anthony Jacobsen and involved a team of lawyers based in Shanghai.  The team had lead responsibility for overall documentation and general transaction management.

Commenting on the successful completion of the new H Share placement, Anthony Jacobsen said, “We are delighted to have been able to assist Sinopharm, a long standing client of the Firm, on its successful H Share placement.  The deal was innovative in that the controlling shareholder was not required to place down shares to the National Social Security Fund, which generally is the case. We also acted as Sinopharm’s legal counsel on its global share offering in 2009 which won a number of industry accolades including Asia Equity Deal of the Year at the IFR Asia Awards 2009 and Best IPO Deal of the Year at the FinanceAsia Awards 2009.”

CICC, UBS and Morgan Stanley acted as the placing agents.