Financial Restructuring of Ballast Nedam

Ballast Nedam (2015)

A&O advised Rabobank, ING and RBS in relation to the financial and corporate restructuring of Ballast Nedam, a listed construction company, by means of multiple bridge financings, a rights issue and a restructuring of its guarantee facility. The financial restructuring involved a (partially) State backed bridge financing, a subordinated facility, arrangements with the credit issuers, arrangements with certain of Ballast Nedam’s project partners, a consolidation of part of Ballast Nedam’s corporate (bilateral) facilities and complex intermediation arrangements between the various financiers. As part of the restructuring the majority of Ballast Nedam’s shares were acquired by Ronesons and Ballast Nedam was ultimately delisted. The restructuring also included advising the lenders on delisting the company and the related change of ownership.

“Innovative deal including complicated inter creditor arrangements”

Sigrid Jansen (Partner, Amsterdam) commented: “This deal was very complex because of the different interests of the lenders in the bank syndicate that originally had their own bilateral corporate and guarantee facilities at different levels of the Group. This resulted in complex liquidation and contingency analysis and inter creditor arrangements. Getting this deal done with the pressure of project parties, credit insurers and dealing with a listed company where profit warnings endanger the continuity of the group, made this a very challenging restructuring.” 

The A&O Team

The restructuring involved teams across the Netherlands, Belgium and Germany.

The Amsterdam restructuring team was led by partner Sigrid Jansen, other lawyers involved were Andrew Thomas, Tim Stevens, Duco Postma, Nicolette Limberger, Maarten Ahsmann, Jens Goelz.