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Investment company Parcom and family Van Eerd, owners of the Dutch supermarket chain Jumbo, are close to an agreement with three major Dutch banks on financing Hema‘s acquisition.
200 million euros
According to Dutch newspaper FD, the loan turned out to be a lot lower than what the potential buyers had hoped. The banking trio (Amro, ING and Rabobank) apparently provide around 200 million euro, while Parcom and Van Eerd had initially counted on 300 million euros. However, the risk departments of the banks involved still have to approve of the loan. In theory, this should be done within a week, as the deadline for the purchase falls within a week.
Parcom and Van Eerd also tried to obtain state support for the takeover, but they were unsuccessful. The banks do still hope to obtain a state guarantee for an additional credit line, which should provide Hema with eighty to a hundred million working capital. Whether that is guaranteed, will only become clear after the takeover.
Bonds
The new owners of Hema want to use the banks’ money in the first place to redeem around 300 million euros in (expensive) bonds. In practice, this leads to a debt rescheduling, as Hema will pay less interest on those bank loans. That is one of the reasons this would reduce the company’s total interest burden from 50 million euros a year to around 10 million euros. This would leave more resources to invest in the retail chain.
Hema’s (provisional) acquisition deal took shape around the middle of October. Now that Parcom and Van Eerd have found the necessary resources, nothing seems to stand in the way of the takeover.
