Paul Hastings and Zhong Lun Law Firm have advised Ping An Fund on its acquisition of a 47.4 percent stake in Chinese automobile website Autohome Inc. from Australia’s Telstra for $1.6 billion. Telstra was represented by Sullivan & Cromwell.
Ping An is the second largest insurance company in China. The deal will give Autohome access to Ping An Insurance's 50 million car insurance clients and 150 million financing clients, as well as a large network of car dealerships and factories as it moves from being a purely online platform to operating an offline sales platform in China in its next phase of development.
The Paul Hastings team on the deal was led by M&A partners Jia Yan and David Wang, investment funds partner Paul Guan, capital markets of counsel Tim Sung and finance of counsel James Ma. The Sullivan & Cromwell team included partners Robert Chu and Gwen Wong.