HgCapital's A-Plan in £170m refinancing

The refinancing consists of two term loan B facilities worth £98.8m and £66.2m, and a revolving credit facility of £5m. ING, HSBC, Bank of Ireland, RBS, SMBC, AIG, NIBC and Guggenheim Partners were mandated to arrange the debt refinancing.

The loans both have a tenure of five years and three months, while the revolving credit facility will run for four years and three months. Leverage following the refinancing will stand at 4.9x.

HgCapital said that following a strong financial performance with considerable deleveraging, it approached banks to refinance existing debt and pay a dividend. The private equity house declined to comment on the size of the dividend.

Previous funding
Equistone acquired a majority stake in A-Plan in May 2008, taking a 68% shareholding while management took the balance. Fortis Bank provided a debt package totalling £60m for the management buyout, according to unquote" data. At the time of Equistone's acquisition, A-Plan employed 380 staff and generated £44m in revenues.

Equistone sold its majority shareholding in a secondary buyout to HgCapital in 2014 after a six-year holding period. Equistone was understood to have made 2.8x money from the sale.

Company
Founded in 1963 and headquartered in Oxford, A-Plan is a provider of insurance products, including SME commercial, motor and home, and high-net-worth insurance. A-Plan currently operates 80 branches across the UK.

The company employs around 1,000 staff and generated £75m in turnover for the year ending February 2016, as well as a pre-tax profit of £25.7m.

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• Topics
• Refinancing
• Financials
• UK / Ireland
• HgCapital
• United Kingdom