Linklaters advises on £2.85bn financing for recommended offer for IDS plc (Royal Mail)

Linklaters has advised BNP Paribas, Citibank, Societe Generale and UniCredit as mandated lead arrangers and bookrunners on the £2.85bn financing for the recommended cash offer by strategic investor EP Corporate Group, a.s. for International Distributions Services plc (IDS), valuing IDS’s share capital at c.£3.5bn and implying an enterprise value of c.£5.2bn. IDS is the parent company of the UK’s Royal Mail and international parcels network GLS and is currently listed on the London Stock Exchange.

The Linklaters team is led by Leveraged Finance partners Angus Graham and Nick Syson, and also includes Co-Head of Corporate and Structured Lending Toby Grimstone, alongside counsel Jo Jimenez, and associates Sindhuja Satti and Amrit Singh Gill (all Leveraged Finance), with support from partners Chris Boycott and Bruce Kilpatrick from the firm’s Public M&A and Antitrust & Foreign Investment practices.

Linklaters’ top ranked banking lawyers advise on some of the largest and most complex deals in the market. The global practice draws on its deep expertise across its corporate and structured lending, leveraged finance, restructuring and insolvency, financial structuring, real estate finance, asset finance, high yield, and trade finance teams to structure innovative solutions for clients.