Acquisition finance

Acquisition finance transactions often work to very tight timetables and involve a complicated balancing of risk and reward between sellers, management teams, debt providers and equity providers. Your professional advisers need to be able to hit the ground running.

How can we help?

Our experienced team of acquisition finance lawyers regularly advise lenders and borrowers in all aspects of acquisition finance and leveraged transactions.

Lawyers operating in this sector need to be able to advise clearly and concisely and take a pro-active stance on transaction management. Leveraged transactions are usually undertaken against a tight timetable, involve a considerable number of parties and raise complicated issues around the risk-reward balance for sellers, management teams, debt providers and equity providers.

Our acquisition finance lawyers advise lenders on the appropriate debt structure for a transaction, the right approach on documentation, the balancing of the competing interests in the priority structure, the strengths, weaknesses and merits of the underlying acquisition, the risks in the target business to continued cash flow and the taking of effective and enforceable security and credit support. In order to give lenders the support they need, we will add additional expertise to our team from other areas of the firm to deal with specific relevant matters such as property, pensions, employment and intellectual property.

When advising borrowers, our acquisition finance lawyers will help the company or management team to assess how bankable its proposition is and what debt structures it might be able to take advantage of. We will advise on the terms of the proposed banking arrangements and look to negotiate the key terms of the banking documentation. Where time is tight, we do not waste it on negotiating points that do not make a significant difference to the borrower or the lender.

Our acquisition finance services

• Advising on transaction structures
• Undertaking legal due diligence
• Drafting and documenting senior and mezzanine loan facilities, inter-creditor agreements, security documents and debentures
• Advising on financial assistance and the whitewash procedure
• Public takeover bid finance