On January 15, 2015, Holtzbrinck Publishing Group (Holtzbrinck) announced that it and BC Partners (BCP) have reached an agreement to merge Springer Science+Business Media (owned by funds advised by BCP) in its entirety with the majority of Holtzbrinck-owned Macmillan Science and Education (MSE), namely Nature Publishing Group, Palgrave Mac-millan and the global businesses of Macmillan Education.

An international team of CMS led by Dr Thomas Meyding has comprehensively advised Holtzbrinck in connection with this transaction which is subject to approval by various com-petition authorities.

Upon completion of the transaction, the new group will be under joint control of Holtzbrinck and funds advised by BCP with Holtzbrinck retaining a 53% share. The joint venture will create a leading publishing group with approximately EUR 1.5 billion turnover and 13,000 employees.

CMS Germany:

 Thomas Meyding (Lead Partner), Stefan Sieling, Maximilian Grub, Martin Kolbinger, Karsten Heider, John Hammond, Regine Hagen-Eck, Birgit Seibold, Christoph Lächler, Tobias Grau, Sabina Krispenz, Kai Wallisch, Andreas Lohbeck, Anne Meckbach, Simon Sabel, Astrid Roesener, Nils Maack, Carolin Kusche (all Corporate/M&A), Matthias Eck, Klaus Ikas, Nicolai Ticic (all IP), Andreas Heim, Thomas Grünvogel, Rebekka Schlecht (Commercial), Florian Dietrich, Karin Schmidtmann (all IT), Stefan Voß, Viviane Körner (all Real Estate/Public), Nina Hartmann, Simon Ramstetter (all Labour/Pensions), Andreas Zanner (Banking/Finance)

CMS UK:

 James Parkes, Narinder Jugpal, Jai Patel, Sabina Carjan, Marc Berger (all Corpo-rate/M&A), Emma Jones (Pensions)

CMS Netherlands:

 Roman Tarlavski, Christian Delgado, Abbas Ali Hyder (all Corpo-rate/M&A), Paulus van den Bos, Fleur van Assendelft de Coningh (Labour/Pensions), Simon Sanders (IT), Rogier de Vrey (IP), Nienke van Renssen (Real Estate)

CMS Switzerland:

 Stefan Brunnschweiler, Franziska Hammer, Philippe Fuchs (all Corpora-te/M&A)

Drinker Biddle & Reath (USA):

 Joseph Seiler III., Eric Marr, Kerri Cutry (all Corpo-rate/M&A), Richard Lomuscio (Litigation), Christine Kong, Sarah Burke (Labour/Pensions), Amy Carroll (IP), John Weber (Tax)

Khaitan & Co (India):

 Rabindra Jhunjhunwala, Anshul Prakash (all German desk), Harsh Kabra (Corporate/M&A)