Squire Patton Boggs has been commended in the 2015 Financial Times Innovative Lawyers Report for Asia-Pacific for its role in advising Myanmar’s state-owned telecommunications operator, Myanmar Posts & Telecommunications (MPT), on the negotiation of an innovative “virtual privatization” agreement with a Japanese consortium led by Sumitomo Corporation and KDDI.
While MPT will remain a state-owned entity for the near to intermediate-term, Squire Patton Boggs played a key role in developing a joint operating agreement pursuant to which the Japanese Consortium will make a significant capital investment and provide extensive knowledge transfer to MPT in return for receiving significant management and profit participation rights. The transaction is intended to enable MPT to make the transition to the competitive telecom market created by the Myanmar Government’s decision to liberalize the market and license two world class providers, Telenor (Norway) and Ooredoo (Qatar).
The Squire Patton Boggs team who acted for MPT was led by Communications Group partners Jack Nadler and Nick Chan.
Mr. Nadler commented: “We are proud to have been recognized by the Financial Times for our role in the transformation of MPT into a world-class operator. Myanmar was previously one of the least connected countries in the world; the liberalization of the telecommunications sector will not only drive the economy, but will also deliver improvements in health, education and transform the lives of people living in the most remote corners of this vast and long-isolated nation.”
Squire Patton Boggs is an internationally recognized leader in the field of communications law. For more than four decades – beginning at a time when the communications industry was largely controlled by a few providers – the firm has been at the forefront of developments that have transformed the communications marketplace throughout the world and has served more than 40 governments/authorities in telecommunications regulatory matters.
Squire Patton Boggs was “Highly Commended” for international strategy by the Financial Times at its inaugural Asia-Pacific Innovative Lawyers Awards in 2014.