Abreu Advogados advised Grupo Marques in a bank debt restructuring
The operation unleashed 60 million euros of bank debt from the Azorean business group allowing the spin-off of the group’s companies in the distribution area.
Abreu Advogados assisted the Marques Group, a business group in Portugal, in a bank debt restructuring operation and in a spin-off of the companies in the distribution sector that belonged to the group. This process allowed the Azorean business group to deleverage around 60 million euros of syndicated bank debt.
The restructuring involved months of negotiation work with several banking entities and the investor (Finançor), in a highly complex operation, which included the reorganisation of multiple bank liabilities, requiring the payment of cross-guarantees and payment in kind leading to the execution of a restructuring agreement under an extrajudicial recovering procedure (RERE), and spin-off of the group’s distribution area, which was acquired by the investor.
The transaction, concluded in mid-July, included the participation of quite an extensive team from Abreu Advogados, covering several of the firm’s practice areas. Nuno Cunha Barnabé, Tax partner at Abreu Advogados, coordinated a team composed by some of the firm’s associated partners, Maria Inês Assis and Joana Maldonado Reis, in the areas of Tax Law; professional partner Gonçalo Delicado, n the Restructuring and Insolvency area in Portugal; associated partner Cláudia Santos Malaquias, associate António Vidal and professional partner Pedro Alves da Silva, under the coordination of the partner Manuel Santos Vítor in Corporate and M&A; and, professional partner Rodrigo Formigal in Financial and Banking Law.
In the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, the coordination of Abreu Advogados team and the respective readjustment of work methodologies were crucial for the successful completion of this operation, which involved extensive work in preparing, revising and updating documents, whilst negotiations were underway and led to the constant need to readjust the operation.
Abreu Advogados Restructuring and Insolvency team in Portugal is formed by a group of lawyers with solid experience and in-depth knowledge of pre-insolvency and corporate insolvency cases involving both portuguese and multinational companies.
Knowledge
