Global law firm Ashurst has advised Bespin Global on the signing of a binding agreement to form a joint venture with e& enterprise, part of e& (formerly known as Etisalat Group).
The joint venture will be branded "Bespin Global MEA, an e& enterprise company", focusing on offering public cloud managed and professional services to serve the customers in the Middle East, Turkey, Africa and Pakistan (METAP).
The JV will be 65 percent owned by e& enterprise and 35 percent by Bespin Global. Both e& enterprise and Bespin Global will contribute their existing public cloud businesses and related professional and managed services from the region to the JV. e& enterprise will be making a primary investment of $60 million in Bespin Global and join its Board of Directors. In addition, e& enterprise has the option to invest another $60 million within a period of 18 months from completion of the transaction. Both shareholders will contribute growth capital to the JV.
The JV will leverage on the capabilities of both companies. e& enterprise will provide strong local market presence and its broad portfolio of digital transformation solutions. Bespin Global will provide deep expertise in cloud migration, cloud operations, cloud native application development, cloud optimisation and cloud billing. The JV will provide a one-stop cloud solution to help enterprises in its digital transformation journey.
As a part of the agreement, e& enterprise will also invest in Bespin Global's holding company. Bespin Global is one of the fastest growing cloud managed service providers serving over 1,700 customers from its locations in South Korea, China, Japan, Singapore, Vietnam, Indonesia, and the US. Bespin Global has been recognised as 'Visionary' in the Gartner MQ for the Public Cloud IT Transformation Services category, and has over 1,000 cloud experts across AWS, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud and other cloud platforms.
The total investment and future commitments announced today are worth over US$100 million.
The Ashurst team was led by corporate partner Simon Rahimzada, assisted by senior associate Matt Hartsuyker and trainee Nour Makarem.
