Kirkland Advises Verizon on Joint Venture with BT Group
Kirkland & Ellis advised Verizon on an agreement with BT Group to combine their respective international enterprise operations into a 50:50 joint venture. The agreement will create a new company focused on multi-national connectivity. The joint venture will serve more than 3,000 customers across more than 180 countries, representing approximately $4 billion in combined annual revenue. Both BT and Verizon will hold equal voting rights and Verizon has agreed to pay BT an equalization payment of $625 million. The combination of international networking businesses creates a future-ready, scaled organization underpinned by a new telecommunications platform designed for the age of cloud and AI. The transaction is expected to complete in 2027, subject to regulatory clearances and other customary closing conditions.
Read the transaction press release
The Kirkland team included corporate lawyers Ed Lee, Rachael Coffey, Jimin He, Aaron Eisen, Caraline Higgins, Elliot Hacker, Ayham Fakhouri, Alex Adamis, Keir MacLennan and Chris Connolly; tax lawyers Dean Shulman, Vivek Ratnam, Natalie Packard, Mavnick Nerwal, Siv Devakumar and Guntash Gill; technology & IP transactions lawyers Dan Lewis, Todd Herst, Mike James, Ryan Williamson, Molly Mahowald, André Duminy, Ben Zeris and Saif Khan; executive compensation lawyers Rohit Nafday, Anthony Ji and Nick Carter; employee benefits lawyers Justin Coddington and Caitlin Pyrce; employment & labor lawyers Jackie Heffernan and Kaitlyn Hodgman; real estate lawyers Ian Craig and Adam Amdur; environmental transactions lawyers Paul Tanaka, Caitlin Meagher-Kreisel and Carter Vella; international trade & national security lawyers Ivan Schlager, Ellie Bacon and Erika Krum; and transactional liability lawyer Hayley Hollender.
