A cross-border Bird & Bird team acted for Spearhead International Limited and Farmwealth Limited in connection with the sale of their Czech and Slovak agricultural businesses, to Bonhart, s.r.o and Ze Nitra, s.r.o.
This substantial multi-jurisdiction deal included managing the transaction and producing and negotiating the corporate acquisition documents.
Spearhead is one of the leading vertically integrated food and agriculture businesses operating across the EU and the UK. Prior to the deal, the Company managed 83,000 hectares of farmland across Poland, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania and the UK, where the company started more than 50 years ago. It is a clear European leader in regenerative agriculture, harnessing valuable data it collects through its application of the state-of-the-art technologies for precision farming. Spearhead specializes in valued-added specialty crops catering to the most demanding food processing businesses in Europe.
Bonart s.r.o was founded in 2020 and is a member of the J&T Group, which is active in the agricultural production industry in the Czech Republic through companies JTZE a.s., JTZE Sobětice s.r.o., Farma Neznašovy s.r.o., Statek Sobětice s.r.o., POLINE s.r.o., Žďár Chudenice s.r.o. and Farma Blovice s.r.o, together totalling 9,300 hectares of farmed land.
The Bird & Bird team was led by London corporate partner, Clive Hopewell (partner, Corporate), assisted by George Mason (senior associate, Corporate) and Ed Reardon (associate, Corporate). Ivan Sagál, the Managing Partner of Bird & Bird’s offices in Czech Republic and Slovakia, led the Corporate teams in our Prague and Bratislava offices: senior associate Ľubomír Brečka and associates Martin Dolnák and Karolína Rösler (Prague) and associates Zuzana Vojtas-Juričková and Radovan Repa (Bratislava).
Clive Hopewell, Corporate partner at Bird & Bird comments: “We are proud to have assisted Spearhead in the sale of its Slovak and Czech subsidiaries. The sale follows from assisting Accession Capital Partners (ACP) on its acquisition of the Spearhead Group in November 2021 (link here). On that deal, we worked alongside our Warsaw team and on this deal, we worked with our teams in Prague and Bratislava. Once again, this transaction highlights Bird & Bird’s strong multi-jurisdictional M&A capabilities across central and eastern Europe and its growing reputation in the agri-tech and agro-chemicals sector.”
Przemysław Głębocki, Co-Managing Partner at ACP says: “Thank you again Clive, Ivan and the entire team at Bird & Bird! It is just over a year since you helped us with the acquisition of the Spearhead Group and this sale of our Czech and Slovak businesses represents a substantial return on investment. We very much appreciated your wise counsel throughout the transaction. We are a regional investor and the cross-border support provided by the Bird & Bird teams in London and across central and eastern Europe is very impressive.”
