insight - Burges Salmon

Fitting the firmto the clientA milestone for Milk Link and the UK dairy industryBurges Salmon has a long history of involvement in thedairy industry. We are particularly proud to have workedwith Milk Link since its creation in 2000.Over the years we have built up an in-depth understandingof our client’s ambitions and expectations, in particular theaims of the 1,600-plus dairy businesses throughout the UKwhich own Milk Link and whose commitment and vision ledto it becoming the UK’s largest cheese manufacturer.Our knowledge and expertise allowed us to create the rightteam to work with Milk Link in one of the first ever mergersbetween a UK and a foreign co-operative. The BurgesSalmon team, led by senior partner Alan Barr and corporatepartner Camilla Usher-Clark, worked closely with the MilkLink board throughout the complex process surroundingthe merger with Arla Foods amba, a Danish co-operativeowned by more than 8,000 Danish, Swedish and Germandairy farmers.The merger, announced in May 2012, was completed on1 October 2012 and resulted in Milk Link merging withArla Foods amba to become part of the fourth largest dairyco-operative in the world.As well as fielding specialists from across our co-operative,food and farming, competition, pensions and employmentpractices, we also drew on the expertise of one of our globalpreferred firms, Gorrissen Federspiel, who advised on theDanish law aspects of the merger. The wider Burges Salmonteam included corporate finance lawyers AJ Venter, TimRoberts and Peter Dunn, EU competition experts, MatthewO’Regan, Laura Claydon and Mark Shrimpling, the firm’shead of food and farming William Neville, employmentpartner Roger Bull and pensions partner Michael Hayles.This was a challenging project involving a number ofcomplex and novel legal and commercial issues in orderto secure a long-term home for more than 1.2 billion litresper annum of members’ milk and the first ever contractuallinkage between the price paid to farmers for their milk inthe UK and the milk price in the wider European market.Burges Salmon has always been on hand to provide the additional legal support and commercialinsight required to help the Milk Link board realise the strategic vision of all our farmer membersobtaining the benefits and security of being accepted into full membership of a leading, globaldairy co-operative.Neil Kennedy, Chief Executive, Milk Link Limited12 INSIGHT Burges Salmon Annual Review 2012