Less than a month after advising on the £1.3bn purchase of Virgin Active by billionaire Christo Wiese’s private equity vehicle Brait, Linklaters’ rising star Alex Woodward (pictured) last month led on Brait’s £780m acquisition of a 90% stake in fashion retailer New Look.
South African Wiese has added New Look to a string of recent investments in the UK High Street, which includes a stake in Iceland.
The deal saw private equity (PE) houses Apax Partners and Permira sell up after 11 years of owning the outfit, passing on around £1bn of debt in the process, giving New Look a total enterprise value of £1.9bn. The owners were seeking to float New Look, which operates more than 800 stores around the globe and holds the second-largest market share for womenswear in the UK, giving Brait and its legal team a short window to seal the deal.
‘From start to finish it took about three and a half weeks,’ said Woodward, Linklaters’ relationship partner for Brait. ‘There was a window of opportunity for Brait to win the deal, which is often the case where the incumbent sponsors are looking at different strategic exit options. However, there are key milestones within those exit timetables that you have to beat to execute successfully.’
Woodward led a three-partner team that included fellow PE partner Stuart Boyd and London corporate chief Stuart Bedford.
The deal, which will see senior management and the family of New Look founder Tom Singh own the remaining 10% of the company, pulled in four other law firms, in part due to its wide employee-ownership structure.
Clifford Chance corporate partners Amy Mahon and David Pearson advised both Apax and Permira. Macfarlanes M&A partner Harry Coghill advised the Singh family and Fried, Frank, Harris, Shriver & Jacobson advised the management. Meanwhile, Eversheds partner Danny Blum led a team that advised New Look on employee share plans.
‘Given the deal timetable we were working to, there were inevitably a lot of moving parts that we needed to deal with quickly,’ said Woodward.
The Brait deals have landed at Linklaters at a relative lull in the PE market.
‘There are always going to be cyclical periods, and at the moment a combination of confidence in the equities markets and cash on balance sheets at large corporates, particularly in the US and Asia, has driven up people’s price expectations,’ commented Woodward. ‘PE houses are looking at a lot of things, but need to find good quality assets at the right valuations because they ultimately need enough left on the table to make a return. For that reason, we have seen fewer buyouts this year than people might have expected.’
tom.moore@legalease.co.uk