Fieldfisher advises Kwalee on its first acquisition: Tictales

Fieldfisher advised Kwalee, one of the world's leading mobile game developers and publishers, on its first acquisition: Tictales, a French company specialized in the creation of narrative games.

Kwalee, founded in May 2011 by David Darling, founder and former CEO of Codemasters, considered as one of the "founding fathers" of the UK games industry, has the most prolific hypercasual game development studio in the world, with more than 40 number one ranked mobile games, most of which were developed by a dedicated in-house team.

This is first acquisition of Kwalee in more than 10 years of existence and is a highly successful player in the hypercasual games industry for IOS and Android devices, with more than 750 million downloads across its portfolio of hypercasual games. This transaction illustrates the game developer and multiplatform publisher's commitment to continue its rapid growth and global expansion.

Fieldfisher was involved in all stages of the transaction, assisting Kwalee from the audit phase through to closing. With this new transaction, Fieldfisher's cross-border and multidisciplinary team, led by Christopher Mesnooh, demonstrates its expertise, particularly in the negotiation phase with foreign buyers of French companies. The team has also demonstrated its mastery of technological and innovative issues in this attractive sector.

The Fieldfisher team was composed of:

For Fieldfisher France :

• Christopher Mesnooh, partner, and Maxence Robillard, associate, for the corporate aspects
• Nathalie Hadjadj-Cazier, partner, and Alexandre Mochon, associate, and Marina Poudevigne, paralegal, for the intellectual property aspects;
• Laurence Dumure Lambert, partner, and Orianne Maurin, associate, for the employment law aspects

For Fieldfisher UK:

• Edward Westhead, partner, for the UK corporate aspects

Christopher Mesnooh, partner in the Corporate M&A department, comments: "We are delighted to have accompanied Kwalee, one of the world leaders in mobile games, for their first acquisition. This transaction, which was completed in a relatively short timeframe, allowed us to combine all of our know-how to accompany Kwalee at all stages of their project and to advise them on all the technical specificities, particularly in terms of industrial property, innovations related to this sector as well as on the economic stakes".