Acquisition of Verdant Leisure, with Richard Caston Managing Director of RJD Partners

Neil Ackroyd

When you were making these three acquisitions in terms of Verdant, what were the kind of issues were coming up on the transactions? Where there any common issues?

Richard Caston

I think the common issues were around sorting out the planning and the property legal points. So in other words, all of these things, as you mentioned earlier, are to some extent just fields that farmers have converted into caravan parks and they have developed from there. So it is absolutely critical that all of that has been done in a legally compliant fashion. And of course with all of these people there would have always been temptation to cut corners and to develop a little bit of something here and there which was perhaps not entirely in line with the planning rules that were in place. That is just the nature of the sector. So it is a case of making sure that that aspect is gone through in extreme detail and that adequate indemnities or routes to a solution of the problems are put in place. So I think that is a common issue and in each case we manage to sort out these problems such as they were prior to making the acquisitions.

Neil Ackroyd

In structuring the transaction, did you put bank debt into it? I don’t have the details in front of me.

Richard Caston

When we did the original acquisition we worked with the Yorkshire Bank who I think have been extremely helpful and supportive on the transaction. They provided bank debt on the original acquisition, they then provided bank debt on the first of the bolt-ons and then on the most recent deal we actually did an all equity funding and then sold down a proportion of it to the bank after the deal because there was some time pressure applied by the vendor and they wanted to get the deal done by the year end. The Bank’s credit committee, for whatever reason, were still review details so we said that’s ok we’ll fund the deal 100% and sell down the requisite amount to the bank following the deal.