As the battle for the UK’s mobile phone market heated up Clifford Chance acted for Deutsche Telecom and its UK subsidiary T-Mobile in its joint venture with Orange Mobile UK to establish the largest mobile operator in the country. Having explored and rejected a number of other options for its client, the Clifford Chance team managed the flow and release of commercially sensitive information between two arch rivals, and, critically, structured a rebalancing loan to enable both sides to enter the joint venture as equal partners but with no cash changing hands. The result is a company that most people, including its customers have never heard of, but which accounts for one in every three UK mobile phone contracts.