New Look’s Trinitybrook buyout bid sees A&O and DLA bag new clients
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Trinitybrook’s offer for teen fashion retailer New Look has won Allen & Overy (A&O), DLA and Simmons & Simmons instructions from new clients.
A&O has scooped a mandate to advise Tom Singh, the founder of New Look, and his family as backers of Trinitybrook on the company’s £699m bid for New Look. Singh is investing £98m into Trinitybrook, the bid vehicle incorporated for the purpose of the recommended offer.
If the bid is successful, Singh, currently a non-executive director, will join New Look’s board as a full-time member. A&O corporate partner Alan Paul was drafted in following a recommendation from one of the other parties to the deal.
Trinitybrook is also backed by venture capitalists Permira and Apax Partners, which are being advised by Clifford Chance corporate partner Matthew Layton. He was brought in by Permira, with which he has a solid relationship.
Meanwhile, Simmons also won an instruction from New Look’s management after a beauty parade. Corporate partner Damon Le Maitre-George is acting for Phil Wrigley, Alistair Miller and Carl McPhail, who are investing £3.8m for their equity stake.
If the deal goes through, Wrigley will be promoted as New Look’s chief executive; Miller and McPhail will become managing director for finance and services and managing director for marketing, operations and international respectively.
DLA has also popped up, with partner Robert Bishop winning an instruction from incumbent New Look chief executive Stephen Sunnucks, who is leaving the company. It is understood that Sunnucks, who has not used DLA until now, is in talks with a number of other companies about joining as a director.
Under the terms of the offer, which is to be effected by way of a scheme of arrangement, New Look shareholders will receive £3.48 in cash for each New Look share. Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer corporate partner Farah Ispahani is advising existing client New Look.
