News & Events | News

Friday 17th December 2004

SJ Berwin advised Inflexion Private Equity on the recent MBO of Ilchester Cheese Company Limited in which funds advised by Inflexion took a majority stake in a new holding company which acquired the Ilchester business.  Senior debt funding was provided by Singer & Friedlander Limited.

Ilchester Cheese Company is a respected brand name and a market leader in the speciality cheese industry.  It is highly regarded for the quality and innovation of its products and processing techniques.  The company remains the leading manufacturer of UK blended speciality cheeses and intends, as a result of this transaction, to continue to concentrate on new product development whilst at the same time maintaining the highest care and attention to the quality of customer service as well as cheese production.

Inflexion is a UK mid-market private equity firm, focused on buyout and development capital transactions of proven businesses in growth markets.  Inflexion is an active lead investor with a distinctive research-driven approach to the mid-market specialising in transactions with an enterprise value of between £10 million and £30 million.

SJ Berwin's corporate partner, Perry Yam, and banking partner, Jeremy Cross led the SJ Berwin team, assisted by assistants from across the various disciplines within the firm.

John Hartz of Inflexion said "Sometimes speed is critical to a transaction.  In this buy out, Perry and his team managed to complete the transaction extremely quickly and with no loss of quality of advice.  All at Inflexion were very impressed by this performance."

Perry Yam said, "We are delighted to have been given the opportunity to represent Inflexion Private Equity on what was our first transaction with them.  There was a collective will to close the transaction very quickly indeed, and our team worked closely with the Inflexion team to successfully close within four weeks of receipt of the instruction.  We very much hope to build upon this experience and develop a very close relationship with John Hartz, Simon Turner and their team."

SJ Berwin's market leading fund formation and deals teams are able to provide a seamless deal service, drawing on their detailed knowledge of the complex fund structuring requirements in implementing corporate transactions.  SJ Berwin advised on more completed buy-outs in Europe in the first half of 2004 than any other law firm, and in the last 12 months advised on 34 completed buy-outs with a total value of over £4.35 billion.

• SJ Berwin is a full-service international legal practice with more than 450 lawyers across its offices in London, Brussels, Frankfurt, Berlin, Munich, Madrid and Paris.
  
• With a dedicated European private equity team comprising over 140 full-time corporate private equity lawyers together with support from its other departments, SJ Berwin advises clients on the full-range of private equity business, both in connection with the establishment of private equity funds and their associated incentive schemes, and on MBOs, MBIs, public-to-privates and venture capital investments.
  
• SJ Berwin has just been named "Law Firm of the Year" 2004 at the EVCA/Real Deals European Private Equity Awards. This follows hard on the heels of our Paris office being named "Private Equity Law Firm of the Year" 2004 at the Finance and Law Awards in Paris in October of this year. Corporate partner Rob Day was named "Legal Adviser of the Year" at the BVCA/Real Deals Private Equity Awards 2004, and our Head of Private Equity, Jonathan Blake, was admitted to the "Hall of Fame" for his services to the private equity industry over the last 20 years at the same ceremony. SJ Berwin won the Chambers Global Award for "Western Europe: Private Equity - Law firm of the Year" 2003, as well as the Acquisitions Monthly award for "Mid-Market Law Firm of the Year" 2003 and the European Venture Capital Journal Award for "Private Equity Law Firm of the Year: Firm & fund work". It was also recently ranked as the "World's Leading Firm for Private Funds Expertise" in The International Who's Who of Business Lawyers 2003/4 and in 2004 was named at The European Private Equity Awards - for the third year running - "Best Law Firm (documentation)" by subscribers to PrivateEquityOnline and Private Equity International.
  
• SJ Berwin won the European Venture Capital Journal Award for Private Equity Law Firm of the Year 2000, Law Firm of the Year and Property Team of the Year at The Lawyer Awards 2000, and Competition Team of the Year at the Legal Business Awards 2000.