Rl and De Lage
Landen deliver
landmark deal
REGION SPECIAL EUROPE
KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER
Rabobank International's UK team joined forces with Rabobank's
corporate bank De Lage Landen Ireland (DLLI) to deliver a
landmark deal for major UK cliënt Premier Foods, a £175 million
(£220 million) committed receivables purchase programme.
And the teams can hardly be blamed for breaking open the
champagne a little earlier than the crowds waiting to celebrate
the New Year, after the deal was declared dead in the water just
a few days before, forcing the teams to achieve the near impos-
sible before the 31 December deadline. The deal, which Rl and
DLLI won in the face of heavy competition from established
players, was DLL's largest ever receivables fïnance transaction.
Yet on Christmas Eve the deal had been pronounced well and
truly 'dead' due to a technical impasse and it was touch and go
as teams in Ireland, the UK and the Netherlands worked furi-
ously to get the deal back on track.
'This is a great deal for us and the cliënt, but the story behind
the deal process is remarkable", says Ben Davies from RI's Lon-
don team. "It's a testament to the commitment, flexibility and
creativity of the teams in Ireland, London and Eindhoven that
helped us overcome a whole series of technical obstacles so we
could push this very complex deal through against brutal time
constraints. And all of this during the Christmas holiday period,
when everybody should have been relaxing at home", Davies
says.
The transaction certainly required a great deal of teamwork right
across the two organisations, involving as it did the DLL's multi-
disciplinary teams in Dublin and Eindhoven and the London RM
and DLL deal teams. But it also required a lot of invaluable work
from London's Legal, Credit and Risk teams, and Europe Region
Credit and KRM in Utrecht. So it came as a blow to everyone
when the deal was almost called off on Christmas Eve. But a po-
tential solution at the last moment prompted a frenzy of activity,
which culminated in a £67 million payment to Premier - the first
instalment on the £175 million facility - on New Year's Eve, beat-
ing the clients' year-end deadline for the transaction.
"In 2007 we closed 5 separate significant cross-sell transactions
with Premier Foods across GFM, Loan Syndications, M&A and
latterly with DLLI. In a sense the DLLI deal was the most satisfy-
ing of all, because it delivered an outstanding cliënt solution
and showed the bank at its best in terms of team work and
commitment to the cliënt. This was also a very high profile deal
in the market and shows what we can do when we all work
together", Davies says.
issue 16 THE WORD
