Unitas, Ontario Teachers may bow out in NZ Yellow Pages restructure

The company's Board and its banking lenders will to vote on a motion Wednesday that would shift Yellow Pages' obligations from NZ$1.17 billion of senior debt to a streamlined, NZ$500 million in senior debt plus NZ$250 million in convertible notes, according to the Australian Financial Review, which further noted that its lenders would largely cut their losses in order to create a more manageable debt structure. In this situation, the stakes held by Unitas Capital and Ontario Teachers Pension Plan - which acquired the company in 2007 in New Zealand's largest (and highly leveraged) LBO - would be entirely worthless.

In 2007, the PE funds paid NZ$2.1 billion ($1.57 billion) for the asset, at 12.9x Yellow Pages' earnings at the time. Last year Unitas and Ontario Teachers Private Capital kicked off the exit process of the New Zealand Yellow Pages Group, approaching a plethora of private equity and industry-related potential takers. Yet, two months after that kicking off, the two backers halted the sale process as the parties were unable to garner satisfactory bids.

 

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• Topics
• Australasia
• Media
• Unitas Capital