The Court of Brescia ordered the prohibition to initiate or continue precautionary or executive actions against assets of the iconic Italian coffee machine maker Bialetti, thus accepting the petition presented by the Milan-listed company. At the same time, the Court authorized to contract a pre-deductible loan through the issue of non-convertible bonds for 17 million euro for the Och-Ziff Capital Investments LLC fund (which at the end of September had 18.7 billion dollars of assets under management in credit strategies) as part of the debt restructuring agreement to be signed pursuant to Article 182bis of the Italian Bankruptcy Law with Och-Ziff, lending banks and a strategic supplier (see the press release here). The Court assigned a 60-day deadline for the filing of the debt restructuring agreement.
More in detail, the bond represents the first tranche of a 27 million euro total issue, pledged by the Bialetti and Aeternum brands and a privilege on Bialetti’s assets and machinery . The issue of this first tranche of 17 million is expected within the last week of November.
The term sheet signed last October with Och-Ziff stated that the emergency bond issue would have taken place in two successive steps:
(i) a first phase (for a maximum of 17 million), following the issuance of the related authorization decree by the Court of Brescia;
(ii) a second phase (for 10 million) on the date of filing with the Court of the restructuring agreements and publication in the competent register of companies.
The same term-sheet then provides for the issue of a new bond (equal to the difference between the value emergency loans and a total of 35 million euro) following the approval of the Debt Restructuring Agreements. For all bonds there is a 5-year maturity starting from the date of issue of the new bond.
Finally, the term sheet reminds that Och-Ziff will participate in a capital increase of Bialetti by investing an additional 5 million euros and that after the transaction the fund will hold a 25% stake in the share capital of Bialetti.
The Bialetti group closed the first 9 months 2018 with 100.2 million euros of consolidated net revenues (from 123 million in the same period of 2017), with a negative consolidated ebitda of 6.1 million (from a positive ebitda for 9 million euros) and a net financial debt of 68.9 millions (from 74.4 millions at 30 June 2018).
