Nick Syson

Nick is a market-leading leveraged and infrastructure finance specialist. He acted on his first leveraged buyout in 1988, set up the firm’s leveraged finance practice in 2001 with Gideon Moore and was Co-Head of the Leveraged Finance Practice until 2016. He was elected by the Partners to the firm’s supervisory board for consecutive terms, he served on the firm’s audit committee for two terms and also the firm’s fairness committee for two terms (two terms being the firm’s constitutional maximum period for each of these roles).

Nick has worked on many leading leveraged finance transactions and infrastructure acquisition financing, including Alliance Boots (which, for 13 years, was the largest European LBO), the Gala Coral Opco/Propco, the double P2P of Valantino and Hugo Boss, NCP, John Laing ,the first post GFC pre-package sale of a distressed private equity asset to its lenders for non-cash consideration, the early cov-lite leveraged financings such as Webhelp and LGC and the LBOs of MasMovil and Coty which were the first new issuance transactions in the LBO market after the first Covid 19 lockdown.

He has recently worked on the public bids for The Royal Mail and ESR (in Hong Kong), and the financing of KKR Infrastructure’s minority investment in Enilive.

Work highlights

• MasMovil Ibercom S.A.: advising the underwriters on the €3bn facilities for the bid by Cinven, KKR and Provident.
• Kohlberg Kravis Roberts & Company (KKR): advising the underwriters on most of KKR’s European acquisitions, including US$ 1.3bn acquisition of the professional beauty and retail haircare business of Coty Inc, the €350m facilities to acquire Exact Holdings BV, the €640m facilities to acquire Webhelp, the £315m facilities to acquire LGC and the £955m acquisition of Pets at Home.
• Alliance Boots: advising the underwriters on the £8bn facilities for the leveraged buyout (LBO) in 2007, the largest ever European LBO until the acquisition of the elevator business from Tyssenkrupp in 2020.
• Hugo Boss: advising the underwriters on the €2.4bn facilities to acquire Valentino Fashion Group which included both an Italian P2P and a German P2P and was also the first time under English law that the financial sponsor required arranging banks to underwrite the issuance equity, as well as the debt.
• Apax Partners: advising the underwriters on the NOL 11bn facility to acquire Evry, a Norwegian technology company.
• General Health Care Limited: advising the lenders on the debt restructuring and subsequent pre-packaged sale of General Health Care Limited.
• Gala: advising the underwriters on the Opco/Propco financing for the betting and gaming company and the £2.3bn acquisition of Coral Eurobet, a debt restructuring and subsequent bond refinancing.
• Paroc: advising the lenders on the restructuring of the Finland-based insulation manufacturer, which was notable for being one of the first two transactions that was subject to lender led pre-packaged sale using non-cash consideration.

• Elected for consecutive terms to the Linklaters supervisory board
• Elected for consecutive terms to the Wilde Sapte executive board.

Nick studied law at the University of Southampton.