Clifford Chance and Baker & McKenzie  have scored key advisory roles in the new joint venture set up by China’s largest grain trader COFCO with the country’s $650 billion sovereign wealth fund China Investment Corp (CIC).

A Clifford Chance team led by Beijing Corporate partner Terence Foo with assistance from counsel Hong Zhang and associate Adam Wang, represented COFCO.  Baker & McKenzie counseled to CIC.

The JV, called COFCO International Holdings, will serve as a “platform for international agriculture investment” and help COFCO integrate the agriculture business it acquired last year, when it snapped up 51 percent of Noble Groupl Ltd.’s grain arm and also 51 percent of Netherlands’ agribusiness trader Nidera.

COFCO will control 80 percent of the venture and CIC will own the remaining 20 percent, according to a COFCO spokesperson.