International
Uber Technologies has agreed to acquire Delivery Hero, a Berlin-based food delivery company, in a transaction that values Delivery Hero at $14.8 billion. The deal is structured as two separate transactions. Uber plans to acquire Delivery Hero's operations in 50 markets. Investment firm SSW Partners will separately acquire 14 other Delivery Hero markets for approximately $1.6 billion, including operations in Spain, Austria, Norway, and Sweden. Ten Big Law firms are advising across the transaction. Freshfields and Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen and Katz are steering Uber in the main transaction, while Cooley is guiding Uber in connection with its financing. The deal brings together one of the world's largest ride-hailing and delivery platforms with a major European and global food delivery network, and the multi-jurisdiction structure of Delivery Hero's operations across 64 markets in total explains both the deal complexity and the breadth of the advisory panel. The involvement of Freshfields in a flagship cross-border technology acquisition underscores the firm's continued positioning in high-value transactional mandates following its recent strategic moves.
Why this matters
A $14.8 billion cross-border technology acquisition spanning 50-plus markets generates one of the most complex regulatory clearance programmes in modern M&A practice. Each jurisdiction in which Delivery Hero operates may have its own competition (antitrust) filing requirement, meaning the legal team must coordinate parallel submissions to regulators including, potentially, the European Commission, national competition authorities across Europe, Asia, and the Middle East, and others. The split-deal structure, with SSW Partners acquiring 14 markets separately, is a common technique to address competition concerns by pre-divesting markets where the combined entity would create undue concentration. Freshfields leading on the buyer side for Uber is a significant mandate that will activate the firm's global M&A, competition, and financing teams simultaneously.
On the Ground
On a transaction of this complexity, a trainee would manage the conditions precedent checklist tracking multi-jurisdictional regulatory approvals, draft and index the completion bible, and coordinate with local counsel across multiple jurisdictions to obtain legal opinions and apostilles on key transaction documents.
Interview prep
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“Why was the Uber and Delivery Hero acquisition structured as two separate deals, and what competition law considerations might have driven that structure?”
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