Slaughter and May advised Whitbread PLC on an amendment to its existing £650 million syndicated bank facility, extending its maturity by two years to 4 November 2018, and introducing an option to extend the facility by a further two years beyond that date (with the consent of the banks at the time). The facility pricing was unchanged.

CONTACTS

Financing: Matthew Tobin (partner), Andrew Williams (associate); Tax: Mike Lane (partner), Joshua Mangeot (associate)

Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe LLP has advised Sberbank, the largest bank in Russia and Eastern Europe, in connection with its $2.94 billion in acquisition financing to Yamal Development LLC, a joint venture between Russian oil and gas companies Novatek and Gazprom Neft.  The financing enabled Yamal Development LLC to purchase Eni S.p.A.’s 60 percent stake in Artic Russia B.V., which, through SeverEnergia LLC, holds four licenses for the exploration and production of hydrocarbons in the Yamalo-Nenets Region of Russia.

Paul Hastings LLP represented the banks on the financing of private equity firm Hellman & Friedman LLC’s purchase of Applied Systems Inc., a leading insurance software provider.

Credit Suisse AG and Cayman Islands Branch acted as administrative agents and Credit Suisse Securities (USA) LLC, Deutsche Bank Securities Inc., Jefferies Finance LLC and UBS Securities LLC acted as joint lead arrangers and joinder bookrunners in connection with the financing.

Norton Rose Fulbright advised Green Eagle Holdings Pte Ltd on a US$120 million syndicated term loan and revolving facility with, amongst others, ABN AMRO Bank N.V., Singapore Branch, as co-ordinating lender, bookrunning mandated lead arranger, facility agent and security agent.

Milbank, Tweed, Hadley & McCloy LLP represented Goldman Sachs and Royal Bank of Canada as Joint Bookrunners and Goldman Sachs, Royal Bank of Canada and Lloyds Bank as Joint Lead Arrangers in connection with the $300 million term loan facility, which closed in 2014 and was used to finance, in part, Global Atlantic Financial Group’s (Global Atlantic) acquisition of Forethought Financial Group (Forethought).  Milbank also represented Lloyds Bank as Sole Lead Arranger for Global Atlantic’s $100 million letter of credit and revolving credit facility that closed in 2013.

Dentons Kyiv acted as Ukrainian legal counsel to Black Sea Trade and Development Bank in connection with the committed trade finance facility to Public Joint-Stock Company “Bank Vostok”.

The Derbyshire-based firm supplies major re-sellers in the gas, water and industrial sectors and has been bought from German listed industrial gases and engineering group, Linde AG by its management.

Leengate Valves has an annual turnover of almost £7m and boasts one of the UK’s most comprehensive ranges of industrial valves. It also provides specialist actuation and automation engineering services.

Macfarlanes has acted for Hayfin Capital Management (“Hayfin”) in relation to a new 5 year term facility of £35.0 million and a £3.0 million revolving credit facility for AIM-listed Sinclair IS Pharma plc (“Sinclair”), the international specialty pharmaceutical company.

Watson, Farley & Williams has advised global private equity firm The Riverside Company (“Riverside”) on their acquisition of Mercareon GmbH (“Mercareon”) by the portfolio company Transporeon GmbH (“Transporeon”).

Riverside has added Mercareon to its Transporeon platform. Both companies are based in Ulm, Germany, and specialize in web-based centralized transport-management software.

Clifford Chance has advised Norddeutsche Landesbank on the financing of the acquisition of Boards & More Group by the German private equity fund EMERAM Capital Partners.

The seller is the Swiss investment holding company Airesis SA which acquired Boards & More in 2005.

Based in Molln, Austria, Boards & More is one of the world's leading producers of kite surfing, windsurfing and stand up paddling equipment and holder of market leading brands such as North Kiteboarding, Northsails, ION and Fanatic.