Milbank’s Leveraged Finance/Capital Markets Team Advise on the Financing of Jacobs Holding’s Purchase of Cognita

Milbank LLP advised a group of major financial institutions in arranging the financing for the acquisition of Cognita, the leading global schools group, by Jacobs Holding of Switzerland. The acquisition consisted of a €403.7 million first-lien term loan and a £200 million first-lien term loan. The euro tranche upsized from €307.8 million at launch.

Cognita operates over 70 schools across 8 countries, educating more than 40,000 children. The organisation was established in 2004 by Bregal with the acquisition of a single school in the UK and expanded successfully into Europe, Asia and Latin America. Cognita continued to grow rapidly and in 2013 KKR invested to become a 50% shareholder in the company, giving even greater support to Cognita’s growth across the globe and helping to build a world-class organisation. Since then, through significant additional investment, the company’s growth has accelerated in both Asia and Latin America, educating more than 20,000 children in these markets. From inception, Cognita has strived to improve the quality of education and provide genuinely inspiring environments for children to develop.

The Milbank team was led by London Global Leveraged Finance/Capital Markets partners Suhrud Mehta, Apostolos Gkoutzinis, Alexandra Grant and Rebecca Marques, with special counsels Miko Bradford and Ana Grbec and associates Laura Bonamis and Darell Hayes.