Clifford Chance (CC), Slaughter and May and Jones Day have taken lead advisory roles on the acquisition of consumer finance provider NewDay by private equity powerhouses Cinven and CVC Capital Partners from Värde Partners.
No financial sum was disclosed however NewDay is one of the UK’s fastest growing specialty finance companies, providing credit to more than 5 million customers and with £1.6bn of receivables.
Once lauded as the trailblazer in private equity CC has returned to form advising the consortium of equity funds comprised of Cinven and CVC Capital Partners. The firm’s private equity chief Jonny Myers took the lead with corporate partner Christopher Sullivan. The duo had support from antitrust partner Jenine Hulsmann and capital markets partner Maggie Zhao.
Slaughters advised Värde with corporate partner Susannah Macknay advising alongside partner David Wittmann. The UK is the largest credit card market in Europe and Värde supported the management team through both the rebranding of the company to NewDay and the acquisition of Santander’s UK retail cards business in 2013 – on which Slaughters advised.
Jones Day represented the management team of NewDay, with corporate partner Julian Runnicles leading a team including tax partner Charlotte Sallabank and Ben Shribman.
This latest move by private equity funds goes against newly released data from Dealogic this morning (12 October) which showed M&A deal volume dropped 26% and 41% year-on year, to $29.8bn and $138.2bn respectively.
UK outbound M&A dropped significantly, down 58% year-on-year to $36.3bn, despite recovering in the third quarter of 2016 to $19.4bn from the second quarter of 2016 ($4.3bn).
sarah.downey@legalease.co.uk