ADVISERS

LEADING the heavyweight team of advisers on the issue is property expert Alex Midgen of Rothschild, Shaftesbury’s main financial adviser. Rothschild has been advising the group for the past year, it said yesterday.

Joint bookrunners are the well known pairing, JP Morgan Cazenove and Merrill Lynch. JP Morgan, which is corporate broker to 37 of the FTSE 100 companies and 84 of the FTSE 250, has been involved in many of the rights issues of recent weeks.

Its team on this occasion is headed by Robert Fowlds, managing director of the firm’s real estate group, and includes Bronson Albery.
Also involved is the firm’s co-head of capital markets Ian Hannam.

Hannam just can’t keep away from deals these days, having advised on rights issue for HSBC and 3i and a host of others.

Merrill’s team is headed by Rupert Hume-Kendall and includes David Church and Andrew Tusa. Bank of America’s controversial takeover of Merrill Lynch may have caused friction in various parts of the merged bank but so far this does not seem to be costing it too many of its UK corporate mandates.

Law firms Lovell and Freshfields also worked on the deal.