| Deals of the year: Tech and telecoms illustrate the ups and downs of 2000 Author: Felix Salmon Acquirer: AntarChileDeal: acquisition of 30.5% of CopecAmount: $1.233 billion Adviser to AntarChile, loan arranger: JP Morgan It was the timing that was the real difficulty. It was the end of 1999, and Chilean holding company Antar had been in disagreements with US conglomerate International Paper (IP) about their share in Chilean conglomerate Copec for five years. IP had inherited a 30.5% stake in Copec when it bought New Zealand company Carter Holt Harvey in a hostile takeover. But although Antar and IP both had 30.5% of Copec, IP found the shareholder agreement with Antar to be constraining. Antar and IP finally came to an agreement: Antar would buy IP’s stake in Copec for $1.23 billion, a figure broadly in line with Copec’s market capitalization on the Chilean bolsa. But Antar, being a holding company, didn’t have the money to hand, and needed commitments in Christmas week of 1999. “This is taking place against a backdrop of year-end 1999/2000. Everyone is in hyper Y2K mode,” recalls Eugenia Wilds, head of JP Morgan’s Latin American loan syndications group at the time. |