Olswang advises CityFibre on over-subscribed £30m fundraising

This article was produced by Olswang LLP, which joined with CMS on 1 May 2017.

International TMT law firm Olswang has advised CityFibre Infrastructure Holdings PLC, a leading owner and operator of fibre optic infrastructure, on an oversubscribed placing of 42,857,142 shares, raising £30.0 million in total (before expenses).

Olswang also assisted CityFibre with the implementation of a new suite of share incentives.

CityFibre is the largest provider of fibre infrastructure to the UK's second tier cities with over 30,000 km of fibre in the ground. The company, which owns, builds, and operates fibre optic infrastructure, works to transform the way governments, businesses, the public sector and consumers communicate by providing gigabit capable infrastructure.

Olswang has acted for CityFibre since its launch in January 2011 and advised on its admission to trading an AIM in January 2014. More recently, Olswang advised CityFibe on its partnership with Sky and Talk Talk to create a new company that will deliver ultra-fast broadband services in the City of York. The new joint venture plans to build a state-of-the-art, city-wide pure fibre-to-the-premise (FTTP) network to deliver broadband speeds of 1 Gigabit (1000 Mbps) direct to tens of thousands of homes and businesses in the city.

Greg Mesch, Chief Executive Officer at CityFibre commented: "We have worked with Olswang since the company was founded, and Paul Blackmore and his team have been instrumental in helping us through our growth stage, to the IPO and beyond. We look forward to continuing that partnership as we seek to build on our successes to date."

The Olswang team was led by Partner Paul Blackmore, who was supported by Senior Associate Katie Nagy de Nagybaczon. Share incentives advice was provided by Partner Andrew Quayle, supported by Associate Catherine Merry.