With the assistance of King & Wood Mallesons, Best Food Holding Company Limited ("Best Food", 01488.HK), a Hony Capital's listed portfolio company, has obtained the clearance by the Hong Kong Stock Exchange ("HKEx") for its extreme very substantial acquisition ("EVSA") of equity interest in Beijing New Spicy Way Catering Management Ltd. ("New Spicy Way"). The circular of the acquisition was released by Best Food on 2nd October 2018 and was unanimously approved by all the shareholders at the extraordinary general meeting on 18th October 2018. The deal is to be effected in two tranches and involves an aggregate of approximately 87% of New Spicy Way's equity interest, at the total consideration of more than RMB1 billion. The transaction constitutes an EVSA in accordance with the listing rules of HKEx.
Best Food is the investment operation and management platform of Hony Capital. Its invested brands include "HHG", "Yujian Xiaomian", "West Master", "Sexy Salad", "Yuepin", "Clay Pot King", "Dafulan", "Foook" and so on. The target company of this acquisition mainly operates the fish hotpot chain restaurants under the brand of New Spicy Way Fish Hotpot. It has more than 100 restaurants nationwide, located in Beijing, Tianjin, Shanghai, Xi 'an and other cities.
KWM acts as the PRC legal counsel to the financial advisor and is deeply involved in this transaction at all stages. According to the due diligence requirements of this transaction, KWM needs to conduct legal due diligence concurrently on New Spicy Way and Beijing HHG Restaurant Management Co., Ltd. (which has been acquired by Best Food previously). Through meticulous organization and intensive arrangement, KWM completed comprehensive legal due diligences of 20 legal entities and more than 200 restaurants of the two target groups in a short period of time, which contributed to the clearance by HKEx.
The KWM team was led by partners Mo Haibo, Zhao Zhen and Wang Jianxue.
