The Sayenko Kharenko antitrust team has provided legal assistance in obtaining merger clearance with the Antimonopoly Committee of Ukraine (the “AMC”) for the spinoff and merger of GE’s Transportation business with Wabtec Corporation. The USD 11.1 billion deal was completed on 25 February 2019.

The Sayenko Kharenko antitrust team managed to demonstrate to the AMC the absence of any competition concerns resulting from the deal for any Ukrainian markets and successfully limited the transaction to a Phase I review. This resulted in smooth merger control clearance of the transaction in Ukraine.

Wabtec Corporation is a leading global provider of equipment, systems and value-added services for transit and freight rail. Through its subsidiaries, the company manufactures a range of products for locomotives, freight cars and passenger transit vehicles. Wabtec Corporation has roughly 18,000 employees and facilities located throughout the world.

GE Transportation is a global technology leader and supplier of equipment, services and digital solutions to the rail, mining, marine, stationary power and drilling industries. The company employs approximately 9,000 employees worldwide.

According to GE’s Chairman and CEO H. Lawrence Culp Jr.: “This transaction is good for GE shareholders, who gain equity in an organization at the forefront of rail innovation; for GE, as we work to reduce leverage and strengthen our balance sheet; and for Wabtec, which now has a stronger and more diversified business mix to serve its customers…The GE and Wabtec teams worked hard to complete this deal, and I am excited by the opportunities ahead for Wabtec.”

Raymond T. Betler, Wabtec’s President and CEO, said the deal was “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to bring together nearly four centuries of collective experience to create a technologically advanced leader with a highly complementary set of capabilities to move and improve the world.”

The Sayenko Kharenko antitrust team advising on the project included senior associate Julia Kuyda and associate Igor Pomaz under the supervision of partner Vladimir Sayenko