Banking ‘club’ delivers £45m refinancing deal
BIRMINGHAM’S banking and professional services community has combined to enable a Staffordshire specialist haulier complete a unique £45.5m (€55m) refinancing deal.
Heavy transportation and lifting company, Abnormal Load Engineering Ltd has secured the funding for its international growth plans.
Advised by a team of corporate finance, debt advisory and transaction specialists at PricewaterhouseCoopers in the Midlands, the Hixon firm has secured the new debt facility from a ‘club’ of four Midlands banks, in order to progress its strategic expansion plans over the next three years. The four-bank ‘club’ arranged to provide the debt facility comprises Barclays Corporate, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and Santander.
Acting as legal advisers to the club of banks were Stephen Bottley and Sarah Day at DLA Piper and Matthew Heaton at Pinsent Masons advised the company.
Abnormal Load Engineering is planning to use the additional funding to design and build bespoke specialist equipment, including the world’s largest land-based crane, to assist in the transportation of heavy-weight infrastructure and machinery, across land and sea.
Mark Harries, the firm’s executive director, said: “This finance is good news for our business and will allow us to continue to strengthen our offering across a diverse range of markets.”
Sarah Taylor, corporate finance director at PwC in the Midlands, said the new debt facility was innovative in the current market and had been structured to meet the company’s specific needs.
“This new debt facility puts the business on a firm financial footing, safe in the knowledge that it has secured the support of a group of local lenders to fund its growth plans for the next three years,” she said.
The successful completion of the deal confirmed that banks were willing to think outside their traditional lending products and support well-run Midlands businesses,” she added.
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Andrew McDonald, at Barclays Corporate, commented on behalf of the Midlands club of banks.
He said: “We are extremely pleased to have completed the refinancing and provision of additional capex facilities of Abnormal Load Engineering.
“The deal has been tailored to meet the specific needs of a unique business, with complex requirements in terms of currencies, jurisdictions, borrowers, lenders and facility types. This deal is a first of its kind for all the parties involved.”
He said the deal highlighted current activity within the banking market, where banks worked together as a club to ensure deals were completed.
The Midlands banks were led by Andrew McDonald at Barclays Corporate, Steve Kemp at HSBC, Ashton Goymer-Brown at Royal Bank of Scotland, and Nick Ashman at Santander.
