In 2021, JunHe assisted CICC to complete its raising of RMB 4 billion from the National Social Security Fund by its CICC Qiyuan Fund. Recently, JunHe again assisted the company to establish the CICC Xiexin Carbon Neutrality Fund, with targeted fund raising of RMB 4.5 billion. The fund has just completed the acquisition of Wiredcraft, a digital product consulting and technology company, as recently announced by CCIG, which includes CICC Private Equity Management Company and Publicis Groupe, a listed company. Publicis Groupe is the largest advertising and communications group in France and is the third largest marketing communications group in the world. Wiredcraft was established in Shanghai, China in 2009, and provides new media and digital communications services to its customers in China and the Asia Pacific Region through its Shanghai and Singapore offices. It provides end-to-end digital marketing solutions and has prominent clients in the luxury, hospitality, automotive and fast-moving consumer goods industries. After joining Publicis Groupe, Wiredcraft will continue to be led and managed by its founding team. Publicis Groupe now owns four large brands in China: Wiredcraft、Publicis Sapient、Digitas and EDGE. This means a digital business team of more than 600 staff to further strengthen its digital transformation business capabilities and assist customers to achieve business growth.
This Project involved three different jurisdictions: mainland China, Hong Kong and Singapore. JunHe was the leading legal advisor of Publicis Groupe and completed the legal work during the entire acquisition process through the joint efforts of its Hong Kong office and Singapore local law firms. This included conducting legal due diligence on the entities in mainland China, Hong Kong and Singapore, assisting in formulating the transaction structure and plans, and drafting and negotiating the transaction documents for the whole process. JunHe’s team assisted in the closing of the Project and the post-closing registration and filing in the three jurisdictions. JunHe also assisted Publicis Groupe to complete the transformation of the labor relations of Wiredcraft’s founding team, enabling them to become employees of Publicis Groupe so that they can continue to lead the Wiredcraft team.
This Project had a very tight schedule. Since it involved three different jurisdictions with a strict deadline and a heavy workload, it meant higher requirements for JunHe in terms of response speed, coordination ability, English language capabilities and attention to detail. Particularly in the later stage of the Project, as the main business of the target company and some senior executives of both parties were based in Shanghai, China, where the epidemic prevention and control situation was intense, relevant local restrictions brought practical problems to the contract signing, document preparation and closing. JunHe’s team overcame these difficulties and cooperated closely with all parties, and assisted their clients to successfully complete the contract signing and closing. JunHe’s creative problem-solving abilities and unyielding professionalism was highly recognized and praised by their clients.
The leading partner of this Project was HUA, Xiaojun (Warren), and the partner undertaking this Project was attorney WANG, Kai. The Project was also greatly supported by partners DE, Lihua (Theresa), HE, Jiaming (Catherine Ho), BAI, Hongjuan and ZHANG, Qing (Atlas), who advised on Hong Kong laws, labor laws and tax laws respectively.