PINSENTS DELIVERS DEAL FOR VENDORS IN £89 MILLION NIGHTFREIGHT SBO
2 July 2004
A specialist legal team from Pinsents has advised the selling shareholders of Nightfreight Group, the UK’s leading overnight carrier for non-standard freight of irregular weight and dimension (IDW) on the £89 million secondary buyout of the company.
The deal is backed by The Royal Bank of Scotland Debt Ventures, which has invested £77 million. The balance of the funding has come from the selling shareholders, Barclays Private Equity (BPE) and Nightfreight management. Management will hold almost 50% of the new company.
Nightfreight operates from 50 depots in the UK and Ireland, with its central hub at Willenhall in the West Midlands. The company employs 2,000 people and has carved out a successful business specialising in the niche area of transporting goods the size or shape of which means they are difficult for conventional parcels businesses to process through their automated systems.
Pinsents has advised the individual selling shareholders and BPE, which was originally the major investor in the £56 million take private of Nightfreight in 2001 and has now substantially reduced its investment.
The Pinsents team has been led by private equity partners, Paul Harkin and Joanne Ellis, assisted by Nicole Kirkham and Elizabeth Slater, with specialist advice from – Banking – Martin Bishop, Kate Myles, Anna Best and James Crellin; Tax – John Christian and Lisa Parisi; and Property – Justin Mason and Beth Moreton.
The management of Nightfreight has been advised by Roger Birchall of Browne Jacobson and Peter Uri led the Dickson Minto team acting for The Royal Bank of Scotland.
