What We Do
With access to significant capital, we provide funds to companies for various transactions, most commonly:
- Leveraged and management buyouts
- Acquisitions
- Recapitalisation
- Refinancing
- Growth financings
- Turnaround financing
- Corporate leverage
- Balance sheet restructuring
We operate in three primary businesses:
Middle Market Transactions
We focus on middle-market transactions, predominately for companies with enterprise values between £50m (€60m) to £500m (€600m). This includes leading, arranging, underwriting and syndicating financings of senior, second-lien and mezzanine debt for leveraged buyouts for public and private companies.
Recent key transactions include:
- Pulse Home Products: £53m of debt facilities to support Rutland Partners’ acquisition of Pulse Home Products Limited, one of the leading providers of branded goods to the UK small domestic appliance market, including Breville, Nicky Clarke, JCB, Bush, Dirt Devil, Hinari and Power Devil.
- Equinix: £82m of senior debt facilities for facilitating the expansion of their European business in the independent and carrier-neutral datacentre market. Previous rounds of financing include €27m of senior secured and mezzanine facilities (September 2005); €40m of senior debt in August 2006 and £40m of senior debt in February 2007.
- SHL Group Plc: £69m of debt facilities for the public to private acquisition by HgCapital of SHL Group Plc, a leader in psychometric testing in the workplace, with more than 5,500 customers worldwide in over 40 countries.
- First Technology Safety and Analysis: $105m of debt facilities for the secondary buyout of the company by HgCapital from Honeywell. FTSA is a global leader in crash test dummies and related safety products.
Underwritings
We use a combination of balance sheet capacity and capital markets capabilities to act as a sole underwriter. CIT can underwrite across the whole capital structure. We have the ability to underwrite credit facilities of £500m (€600m) or more as a sub-underwriter or club member, where required.
One of the highlights has been the sub-underwriting of €175m for Kion Group, a leading supplier of industrial trucks, warehouse technology and related services in Europe, as well as providing secured senior and mezzanine facitilities of US$920m to Formula 1.
Participations
We invest in syndicated bank debt across all industries. This debt is used by borrowers for leveraged buyouts, acquisition financing and general corporate needs. Investments include first- and second-lien secured loans that are sourced in both the primary and secondary markets.
Senior debt transaction sizes of $20m and above, with companies generating at least $7.5 million of EBITDA, are our focus. We have the ability to provide cash-flow and asset-based debt.