Steinhoff

Die Investmentbank Moelis & Company wurde mit dem IFR Award 2019 als beste Restrukturierungsberater ausgezeichnet.
Von der IFR-Jury wurde auch Steinhoff als besonderes Highlight hervorgehoben.

https://www.ifre.com/story/2133648/year-...b1402c4w7r

Saving Steinhoff
The cracks in the easy-money edifice started to appear in 2019, as several companies with complex capital structures suddenly teetered on the edge, going from heroes to zeroes with little warning as there were no covenants to trip. A prime example was Steinhoff. For holding the retailer’s empire together and working against the odds in other situations, Moelis is IFR’s Restructuring Adviser of the Year.
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Moelis prides itself on a “one firm” approach to restructurings, being able to offer the same service to clients from Europe to the US to Asia. That approach proved highly useful in the past year as complex cross-border restructurings, fuelled by years of cheap debt, became marquee assignments.
With few covenant triggers to highlight impending problems, distressed companies with complicated multi-layered and multi-jurisdictional capital structures descend into trouble suddenly, with immediate and deep liquidity problems already baked in.
This has created tricky, and in many cases insurmountable, problems for company-side restructuring advisers drafted in at the last minute to find turnaround solutions.
As a result, the last year saw many high-profile European situations ending in liquidation, especially within the struggling retail sector.
Against this backdrop the success of the €11.8bn restructuring of South African retailer Steinhoff has been a major highlight of the recent debt restructuring market. The process was driven by Moelis, which was appointed as company adviser in December 2017. The deal closed in August 2019.
Steinhoff – which has assets around the world, such as Poundland in the UK, Mattress Firm in the US, Conforama in France as well as Pepkor across Africa and other businesses in Australia – was hit by an accounting scandal in December 2017, which sent its shares down 95%.
Initially liquidation of the group seemed the only outcome. But Moelis stemmed the immediate liquidity crisis, securing within a month of appointment new credit lines for the UK operating company and others. It had also sold the group’s stake in investment company PSG for R7.1bn (US$598m) and made other disposals.
“Moelis was there at the critical stage at the start and saved the company from bankruptcy in the first three months – other financial advisers were not involved at this time,” said Matthew Prest, co-head of Europe at Moelis. “We worked on all aspects of the deal.”
Moelis then began complicated discussions with creditor groups on a term sheet which saw all debt reinstated at par at holding companies Steinhoff Europe AG and Steinhoff Finance Holding by way of company voluntary arrangements, but with maturities extended out to December 2021.
Debt restructurings also took place at European property group Hemisphere and Mattress Firm in the US, implemented by way of a contractual agreement and a pre-arranged Chapter 11 filing respectively. It also refinanced French home furnishing chain Conforama via a conciliation process.
“It was a great outcome for the market. There were times where we thought the whole thing would implode but it didn’t. We delivered,” said Charles Noel-Johnson, co-head of EMEA restructuring.