Milbank Advises Punch Pubs on £600 Million Debut Bond Offering and £70 Million Super Senior Revolving Facilities Agreement

Milbank LLP advised Punch Finance plc, a wholly owned finance subsidiary of Punch Pubs Group Limited (“Punch”), in connection with its debut offering of £600 million 6.125% senior secured notes due 2026 (the “Offering”) and related £70 million super senior revolving facilities agreement.

The proceeds of the offering were used to refinance all of Punch’s existing debt, including its long-standing whole-business securitization notes. The complex transaction was the first European high yield bond refinancing of a whole-business securitization structure in its entirety.

Concurrently with the issuance of the notes, Punch entered into a super senior revolving facilities agreement with Barclays Bank PLC and National Westminster Bank plc, which will provide for borrowings of up to £70.0 million.

Punch is one of the leading pub companies in the United Kingdom, with a portfolio of 1,235 pubs across England, Scotland and Wales. Punch owns an extensive and well-distributed estate of predominantly freehold properties, a large proportion of which are in Southeast England and the Midlands.

The Milbank team was led by European Leveraged Finance/Capital Markets partners Apostolos Gkoutzinis, Suhrud Mehta and Miko Bradford, special counsel Trevor Truman, associates Dimos Papanikolaou, Chara Makrygianni, Byron Nicol and Abbey Dalgleish, Panos Tsezos and trainee solicitor Valeria Vouterakou. The team also included London Tax partner Russell Jacobs, associate Cosmos Fung, New York Tax partner Eschi Rahimi-Laridjani, associate David Hanno, New York Alternative Investments Practice partner Catherine Leef Martin and associate Megha Kalbag.