Clifford Chance (CC) and Latham & Watkins are among a raft of firms which advised on the £1.35bn acquisition by Onex of Parkdean Resorts from Electra Partners.
The holiday firm was created through the 2015 merger of Parkdean Holidays and Park Resorts to make a business with 73 holiday parks across England. Onex’s purchase of the holiday company is expected to close in the first quarter of 2017.
CC advised long-time client Electra with a team led by partner Melissa Fogarty. Fogarty’s work for Electra included guiding the private equity firm through its recent refinancing and its $1.1bn disposal of Capital Safety to KKR in 2011.
The Magic Circle firm has had a strong run of late in the private equity space, having acted for funds trio Cinven, Permira, and Mid Europa on its purchase of Allegro Group. The deal was the firm’s second high-profile club deal in a week as it acted for Cinven and CVC Capital Partners on their purchase of consumer finance provider NewDay.
Fogarty said: ‘The sale of Parkdean follows a string of successful private equity deals our team has advised on in the last week. We see opportunities in the market and are pleased to be supporting clients like Electra to take advantage of them.’
Parkdean Resorts was advised by Macfarlanes with a team including partners Simon Perry and Tom Pedder. Travers Smith advised management with a team led by Adam Orr.
King & Spalding took a role on the deal acting for Polygon Recovery Fund, which had a smaller stake in Parkdean. London-based William Charnley and Elisabeth Baltay led K&S’s team on the deal.
Latham acted for the purchaser, Canadian fund Onex. Other recent deals Latham has acted on for the private equity house included its 2015 purchase of Survitec Group for $680m. Latham’s team on the deal include London corporate partner Mike Bond and finance partners Jay Sadanandan and Dominic Newcomb. Recent recruit Jeremy Trinder acted on real estate matters, while Sean Finn acted on tax aspects.
victoria.young@legalease.co.uk
