Morrison & Foerster is representing Pinnacle Entertainment, Inc. in its$2.8 billion acquisition of Ameristar Casinos, Inc. announced Friday, December21. The purchase price is $26.50 per share in cash, for a total enterprisevalue of $2.8 billion, including debt of $1.9 billion and cash on hand of $116million as of September 30, 2012. Through the Ameristar deal, Pinnacle willmore than double in size to 17 properties in 13 locations. The transaction,pending shareholder and regulatory approval, is expected to close in Q3 2013.
San Francisco partner and co-chair of the firm's global M&A practiceRobert S. Townsend leads Morrison & Foerster’s deal team that also includesSan Francisco partner Eric T. McCrath, Washington, D.C. partners David P.Slotkin and Roxann Henry, and New York partners Domnick Bozzetti and Peter C.Dopsch.
The deal is the latest in a string of blockbuster M&A transactionshandled by Morrison & Foerster including:
- SoftBank’s $20.1 billion investment to acquire a 70% stake in Sprint (a $43.3 billion enterprise value deal), and SoftBank in Sprint’s announcement that it will acquire approximately 48% of Clearwire that it doesn’t already own for $2.2 billion.
- Equity Residential in a joint agreement with AvalonBay Communities to acquire a vast portfolio of U.S. apartment properties from the Lehman Brothers estate for $16 billion.
- DaVita in its $4.2 billion acquisition of HealthCare Partners Holdings.
- Hitachi in its $4.8 billion sale of Hitachi Global Storage Technologies to Western Digital.
- Intel on its continued strategic growth, including the company’s $4.1 billion purchase of chip-maker ASML; as well as a $375 million acquisition of 1,700 patents and applications from InterDigital.
