FRP advises on Inspirit Capital’s Aquest investment
The FRP team was led by partner Nick Grainger who was appointed by Inspirit Capital to action a competitive debt auction process and deliver a competitive ABL facility
FRP’s debt Advisory team has supported private equity firm Inspirit Capital on its investment in Aquest, a leading human capital services business, in a corporate carve-out from Capita Plc.
Aquest comprises the Capita businesses previously known as Capita HR Solutions, Capita Resourcing, and ThirtyThree. Following completion, Capita HR Solutions will be rebranded as Conexia and Capita Resourcing will be rebranded as Peregrine. ThirtyThree will continue to trade under its market-leading brand.
The three businesses help their customers attract, recruit, train, deploy, and develop their workforce. They have circa 1,000 multinational corporate, SME, and public sector clients operating across a wide variety of industry sectors. With operations in the UK and the US, the business employs around 1,000 employees.
Inspirit Capital is a London-based investment firm that specialises in acquiring businesses that are no longer core to their parent company’s strategic objectives and require a different ownership structure to achieve their full potential. Inspirit manages capital on behalf of a blue-chip institutional investor base.
The FRP team was led by partner Nick Grainger who was appointed by Inspirit Capital to action a competitive debt auction process and deliver a competitive ABL facility.
A financing agreement was secured with Arbuthnot Commercial Asset Based Lending (ACABL), who structured and delivered a comprehensive solution to meet the funding requirements of the transaction within a time-critical completion deadline. The facility consisted of a cash flow loan to support the initial purchase consideration and a revolving funding line to optimise ongoing working capital.
Nick Grainger, partner at FRP Corporate Finance, said: “The strong pre-existing relationship between, Inspirit Capital, Arbuthnot Commercial ABL, and FRP Corporate Finance, proved to be a key factor in streamlining the process and enhancing the overall execution to achieve a defined completion date. By working alongside our respective teams, Inspirit Capital had the assurance of being able to focus on the deal rather than the debt.”
Will Stamp, founding partner at Inspirit Capital, added: “This was a complex transaction with many moving parts, and we had to move quickly. When selecting a lending partner, our top priorities were commerciality and deliverability. We value these qualities highly because we must present a proposition to the vendor that we know can be executed successfully.”
