Smurfit Westrock Rings Bell at NYSE Listing

A Matheson team led by Dublin-based partners David Fitzgibbon (Co-Head of Corporate and Head of Corporate M&A) and Susanne McMenamin, and New York-based partner David Jones; together with a Corporate M&A team comprising of senior associates, Thomas Burke and Anna O’Carroll, associates, Darren Quinn, Leo Collins and Joanna Malek, solicitors, Megan Gantly, Kevin Lavin, Niamh L. Gallagher, Rachel Hodgins, David Dempsey, Zainab Masood, Evelyn Soye, William Annab, and Kevin Burns, and trainees, Ellie Glynn and Maura Sullivan are pleased to have advised Smurfit Kappa Group, the FTSE 100 paper-based packaging company on its successful combination with WestRock Company, to create Smurfit Westrock plc, a global leader in sustainable packaging. 

Having a market capitalisation of $25.5bn, Smurfit Westrock will be an S&P 500 company with its primary listing on the New York Stock Exchange and a standard listing on the London Stock Exchange.  The combination is one of the largest outbound mergers ever executed by an Irish company.  It was announced in September 2023 and implemented via an Irish law scheme of arrangement and a Delaware merger with a subsequent listing on the NYSE and the LSE.

Speaking today, David Fitzgibbon, Co-head of Corporate and head of Corporate M&A. said  “Matheson is proud to have led the legal team supporting Smurfit Kappa on its combination with WestRock to form Smurfit Westrock.  We extend our sincere congratulations to Tony Smurfit, Ken Bowles, Gillian Carson-Callan and the rest of the Smurfit Kappa team on bringing this combination to a successful close, and we extend our best wishes to the newly combined Smurfit Westrock team.  This is one of the biggest and most complex transactions of its type on the market, and its successful completion is a testament once again of the skills and experience of Matheson’s market-leading Corporate M&A practice's proven ability to work with multinational clients on complex and strategic cross-border transactions."

The Corporate M&A team worked alongside a wider Matheson team including Anti-trust partners Niall Collins, Kate McKenna and Calum Warren, and senior associate Simon Shinkwin; Tax partners Tomás Bailey and Philip Tully, supported by associate Rachel O'Sullivan and solicitor Cliodhna MacCabe; Litigation partner Brendan Colgan with senior associate Kathryn Rice and trainee Peter Holland; and Employment partner Russell Rochford supported by associates Conor Woods and Shane Gallen and solicitor Shauna Moran.

The Matheson team worked alongside US counsel, Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz, and UK counsel, Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer LLP.

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