Thomas Waller

Tom is a highly regarded partner in our banking and finance practice, specialising in public and private leveraged and acquisition financing transactions.

Tom acts for financial sponsors, private equity and infrastructure funds, investment banks and borrowers/issuers on a range of domestic and cross-border financing transactions, including leveraged loans, incurrence-based and covenant-lite financings, infrastructure financings, P2P transactions, unitranche, senior, TLB and super senior facilities, high yield bonds, bridge facilities, bank/bond financings, refinancings and restructuring.

Tom has particular experience and expertise in covenant-lite, incurrence-based bank/bond documentation and capital structures which is at the forefront of the European leveraged finance market.

Tom is named as a ‘rising star’ and one of ’40 under 40’ rising legal practitioners in private equity (Legal Week, British legal awards) and as one of the Top Financing Lawyers in EMEA by Mergerlinks

Work highlights

Tom has advised on a wide range of debt financing transactions.

These include advising:

• A leading financial sponsor MBD/West Street funds on numerous transactions, including on debt financing for the public offer for Kahoot! AS, the acquisitions of Advania, Visolit, Content+Cloud and DataCenter Oy and others, the acquisitions of Elevate and Lloyds Register (LRQA) and others, debt financing for Caldic, B&B Hotels and related transactions and acting for a leading financial sponsor infrastructure on financing for the acquisition and public offer for Froy AS

• Triton: acting for Triton on multiple transactions, including on financing for its public offer for Caverion and the debt financing for Assemblin, Bormioli Pharma and DeepOcean
• Globalvia and Kinetic: on debt financing for their recommended offer for the take-private of The Go-Ahead Group plc
• Brookfield: on multiple transactions, including in relation to Educo and SBB and on financing for its public offer for HomeServe plc and on Brookfield’s acquisition of and investment in TDF
• Bridgepoint: in relation to debt financing on multiple transactions, including for Practice Plus, CareUK, Miller Homes, Diaverum and others
• Unifiedpost Group: in relation to growth financing provided by Francisco Partners
• IPI Partners: on senior and holdco debt financing for the acquisition of Digiplex
• Warburg Pincus and Towerbrook: on financing for the public offer and takeover of The AA Group
• Groupe Bruxelles Lambert (GBL): on multiple transactions, including in relation to the acquisitions of Onelink and of Webhelp from KKR and other transactions
• Apollo on the loan, bond and PIK financings supporting its buy-out of Verallia, and subsequent transactions (awarded IFR leverage finance deal of the year) and on the debt financing supporting Apollo’s public offer and acquisition of Gamenet Group / Lottomatica, and Apollo’s bid and public offer for RPC

Tom was recently recognised as one of ’40 under 40’ rising legal practitioners in private equity (Legal Week, British legal awards) and as one of the Top Financing Lawyers in EMEA Mergerlinks.

Tom regularly presents at Loan Market Association (LMA) events on the subject of leveraged finance documentation and terms; most recently on the topic of cash controls, covenants and covenant-lite/incurrence-based debt financing terms and the convergence between loan and bond products.

Tom was seconded to Alcentra for six months in 2011, where he was instrumental in the development of the collateralised loan obligation (CLO) cashless role mechanism.

Tom studied music at King’s College, University of Cambridge, and holds a Graduate Diploma in Law.