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Orica and Exxon offload
Blake Dawson Waldron advised Orica and Exxon Mobil on the sale of their 50/50 plastics joint venture Qenos. The companies sold Qenos to state-owned diversified chemicals company China National…
Lawyers Weekly
Blake Dawson Waldron advised Orica
50/50 plastics joint venture Qenos. The
companies sold Qenos to state-owned
diversified chemicals company China
National Chemical Corporation.
The decision to sell was made after
Qenos posted a series of losses, partly
as a result of rising input costs. BDW
partner Peter Stirling said dealing with
a “major Chinese multinational” added
interesting and challenging aspects to
the deal.
“There were aspects of the transac
tion that were of concern to them, on
which they focus, that we wouldn’t nor
mally focus on, and vice versa,” he said,
but most of these issues were worked
through with no difficulties.
The transaction itself was a “reason
ably complex business”, with some envi
ronmental aspects to deal with. “From a
legal perspective there were quite a few
issues to get through, and it took a bit of
time dealing with those,” Stirling said.
The fact that Qenos was a joint ven
ture also added to the challenge. “We had
two [sets of] shareholders’ interests to
deal with, together with the concerns of
China National Chemical Corporation,
so the multi-party aspect was most chal
lenging.” The transaction was conducted
through a trade sale process, and “nec
essarily took a long time” because of sig
nificant interest from industry players
and private equity funds.
The deal still requires approval
from the foreign investment review
board and the People’s Republic of
China Government.
China National Chemical Corpora
tion was advised by Corrs Chambers
Westgarth in Sydney and Skaddens in
Beijing.
