Finance Monthly M&A Awards 2019 - Winners Edition

FINANCE MONTHLY M&A AWARDS 2019 15 ABOUT LAURA RICH Laura is a senior legal counsel with years of experience advising boards, senior executives and management teams on legal issues and strategy across a wide range of corporate matters and has worked on transactions and projects across multiple jurisdictions in Africa, Europe, Asia and LatinAmerica. She is fluent in French and also speaks German. During her time in private practice she formed part of a number of multi-jurisdictional teams advising financial institutions, private equity funds and corporates on a wide range of international transactions. She also gained exposure to acquisition and bank finance, anti-trust and competition, international arbitration and completed various secondments, including a pro-bono secondment to the Office of the Prosecutor for the United Nations International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda. Laura was one of the lead lawyers on Acacia Mining plc’s initial public offering on the London Stock Exchange in 2010 and joined the company following the IPO. As well as broad corporate experience, Laura has significant experience advising on complex legal and regulatory matters affecting the mining industry and wider extractive industries, particularly the African region. As Deputy General Counsel of Acacia, she advised on a variety of challenging issues across Acacia’s business, the most challenging being Barrick Gold Corporation’s offer to acquire the interests of Acacia’s minority shareholders in what was a distinctly complicated and unique deal. Laura formed part of the wider in-house and external team advising Acacia’s Transaction Committee throughout this process. The transaction was conducted against the backdrop of complex and long- running disputes with the Government of Tanzania that were subject to international arbitration proceedings. The disputes involved the imposition of a concentrate export ban and other matters and various tax disputes, including claims for taxation in excess of US$193 billion. At the time of making its offer for the minorities Barrick owned approximately 63.9% of the issued share capital of Acacia and had been seeking to negotiate a resolution of the disputes independently. The transaction posed a number of complicated considerations and issues in the context of dispute resolution, corporate governance and business continuity due to the mounting pressures placed on Acacia as an independent company and certain other unique considerations. Notwithstanding this, the offer from Barrick successfully concluded through a scheme of arrangement, closing in September 2019, with minority shareholders receiving an acceptable premium and rights to future dividend payments upon disposal of Acacia’s exploration portfolio. In addition to receiving this award Laura received the award for Arbitration, Dispute Resolution and Mediation (United Kingdom) as part of the Women in Law Awards 2019 by Lawyer Monthly, the award for Securities Lawyer of the Year (United Kingdom) by Finance Monthly Legal Awards 2019 and was also named in-house individual of the year for litigation at the Legal 500 UK Awards 2019. TRANSACTION ADVISERS J.P. Morgan Cazenove and RBC Capital Markets acted as joint financial advisers and brokers to Acacia. Shearman & Sterling (London) LLP acted as legal advisers to Acacia. Camarco acted as public relations advisers to Acacia. Lazard & Co. Limited acted as independent financial advisers to the Transaction Committee.