Watson Farley & Williams (“WFW”) has advised BW Offshore on the acquisition of Ideol, the French floating offshore wind technology specialist, to create BW Ideol, a global integrated floating offshore wind company. Following completion of this acquisition and of a private placement, BW Ideol’s shares were admitted to trading on Euronext Growth Oslo.

BW Offshore is a leading provider of floating production services to the oil and gas industry listed on the Oslo Stock Exchange.

The multidisciplinary WFW Paris team advising BW Offshore was led by Arnaud Félix (Partner), assisted by Guillaume Pouyet (Counsel) and Associates Adrien Launay, Arnaud Benezeth, Inès-Anaïs Martinet and Mohamed Douib in corporate and project matters, together with Arnaud Troizier (Partner) and Simon Dumontel (Associate) in regulatory, Romain Girtanner (Partner) and Hélène Ibos (Senior Associate) in tax, Philippe Wolanski (Partner) and Julie-Anne Thiebaut (Senior Associate) in finance and Cyrille Gogny-Goubert (Partner) and Gautier Dupuy in real estate. WFW worked with Ergon avocats Pauline Mordacq (Partner) in employment law and EDV Avocats (Emilie de Vaucresson, Partner, and Violaine Besson) on IP/IT/GDPR matters.

Arnaud Félix commented: “We are delighted to have assisted BW Offshore on the acquisition of Ideol and formation of BW Ideol. Our multidisciplinary team’s energy sector expertise was already recognised in the emerging offshore wind market and this deal further highlights our ability to advise and lead on milestone sector transactions such as this”.

BW Offshore is assisted by Thommessen (Oslo) on the Norwegian law aspects of the transaction.

Ideol’s shareholders were advised by Clifford Chance Europe Limited and Sekri Valentin Zerrouk and, on aspects relating to Norwegian law, by Wikborg Rein.