Edward Aldred

Edward is a highly regarded leveraged finance lawyer, with more than 18 years’ experience advising on complex leveraged finance deals, developing innovative solutions and strategies for clients on their most strategically significant transactions. Edward has particular expertise acting on complex cross-border public and private leveraged acquisition and infra-structure financings, leading combined loan and high-yield bond financings and senior and junior capital structures. Edward is rated in the Chambers Rankings. Edward is named as a ‘Leading Individual’ for Acquisition Finance in the ‘Legal 500’ 2022 Rankings; he was rated as a “Rising Star in Legal Services” by the Financial News “40 under 40 Legal Services”; and is rated by Chambers & Partners.

Edward is the Co-Head of Linklaters’ financial sponsor leveraged finance practice and advises private equity funds, corporates, family offices, sovereign wealth funds and investment vehicles on acquisition, infra-structure and other event-driven finance transactions, as well as minority stake, holdco and other structured finance transactions. Edward also supports his clients across all aspects of sell-side finance work (including staple finance, vendor loans, certain funds and other sell-side analysis) and with on-going portfolio work (including taps, repricings, refinancings and recapitalisations).

Edward’s knowledge and experience covers the full spectrum of loan products, from syndicated institutional cov-lite incurrence-based TLB facilities through to unitranche and covenanted maintenance loans, including super senior, senior secured and junior debt instruments. In addition to his familiarity with the European loan market, Edward also has extensive international experience raising US dollar debt in the syndicated US TLB loan market under English law and acting for many international first time issuers in the syndicated loan market.

Work highlights

Edward has led on many “firsts” in the loan market during his career and has acted on some of the largest and most innovative transactions. Recent experience includes advising:

• Brookfield Asset Management on the financing of its £4bn UK P2P of HomeServe
• Ardian on the infrastructure financing of its c. $600m acquisition of Mila, the largest telecoms infrastructure service provider in Iceland
• Jacobs on the c. €4.4bn HY / bridge / cov-lite TLB financing of its bid for Refresco, one of the largest beverage manufacturers; and its £650m cov-lite TLB and second-lien financing for the acquisition of Cognita Schools, one of the leading international K12 education providers
• PAI on multiple transactions, including its €575m cov-lite TLB and second-lien financing for the acquisition of Euro Ethnic Foods, one of the first such syndicated deals to include ESG-linked margin adjustments; and its €1.05bn cov-lite TLB financing for the acquisition of Areas, a global leader in the food and beverage and travel retail markets
• CVC on multiple transactions, including its €550m cov-lite TLB financing for the acquisition of a 65% equity stake in APRIL, the French headquartered insurance services group, and the subsequent French law public tender offer for the remainder of APRIL's share capital, one of only a small number of leveraged French P2Ps; and its US$750m cov-lite TLB and US$900m senior secured high yield bond financing for GEMS Education, the first syndicated cov-lite TLB for a Middle Eastern issuer
• Carlyle on its £80m unitranche financing for the acquisition of technology business Calastone, the largest global funds network business; and the leveraged financing of its UK P2P for Harwood Wealth Management Group PLC
• Digital Bridge / Vantage Data Centres on their £380m leveraged infra-structure financing for the acquisition of New Generation Data Centres, a leading UK data centres business; and Digital Bridge on a structured infrastructure financing for the acquisition of Syn/Nova’s telecoms tower portfolio

Edward has spent extensive periods of time advising international clients from Linklaters’ Singapore, Dubai and Hong Kong offices.

Edward has worked closely with the Loan Market Association developing and delivering their training, including in particular their financial covenant training, and speaking at Loan Market Association hosted conferences.