Debt memoranda can often be boring documents. Yet every once in a while FT Alphaville stumbles upon one that makes you squint a little closer to the fine print.
You may have heard that Asda – Britain’s big retailer – is currently undergoing what could become the biggest UK leveraged buyout in over 10 years. The buyers ? Two brothers owning petrol pumps from Blackburn named Mohsin and Zuber Issa, and PE store TDR Capital. The purchase price, in case you were wondering, is just under £7 billion. Walmart is the seller.
Such an agreement requires capital. Tons in fact. That’s why Asda has just raised £2.25bn of five-year senior secured notes and £500m of six-year senior secured notes, as part of the 3.7 billion pounds. The bonds were priced at 3.25% and 4% respectively. It’s called a leveraged redemption for a reason you know? Pretty standard stuff, you might say.
What is less standard, however, are the debt offering memorandum flow charts, which for us can only be described. . . we leave it up to you.
Here they are. First the corporate structure before approval by the Competition and Markets Authority (open in a new tab to enlarge):
And second, after CMA approval:
When Chancellor Rishi Sunak welcomed the agreement in October he said how happy he was to see the supermarket return to British ownership. I’m not sure about you, but we’re pretty sure neither Luxembourg nor Jersey is in the UK. Don’t nitpick though.
Either way, captions are welcome in the comments below, but please keep them above the board. We don’t want to have to delete your posts. Your.
Related links:
Asda’s billionaire buyers raise £2.75bn in record UK junk bond sale – FT
Billionaire Asda buyers to shell out less than £800m to land £6.8bn takeover – FT
Hot debt markets fuel growth of Blackburn’s gas pump empire – FT
Asda buyers to sell assets to fund £6.8bn deal – FT
Buying Asda: How petrol station billionaires plan to close the deal — FT
