Cleary Gottlieb represented Germany’s Financial Market Stabilization Agency (FMSA) in connection with the privatization and the €1.16 billion IPO of Deutsche Pfandbriefbank AG (pbb), the largest IPO in Germany so far this year.
The FMSA manages Germany’s Financial Market Stabilization Fund (FMS) which stabilized and acquired pbb and its holding company HRE during the financial market crisis. The European Commission required Germany to privatize pbb by the end of 2015. The privatization was organized in a dual-track process which eventually led to the IPO of pbb in July 2015.
Cleary Gottlieb advised FMSA with respect to both the M&A and IPO track as well as with regard to a wide range of other legal aspects including corporate, regulatory and state aid issues resulting from pbb’s separation from HRE and the repayment of stabilization measures that had been granted to pbb and were to be repaid from the privatization proceeds.