International law firm CMS has advised Big Yellow Group plc, the UK’s brand leader in self-storage, on its oversubscribed £110m capital raise.
Big Yellow, which is listed on the premium segment of the Main Market, will use the net proceeds to build out its existing pipeline of stores.
The capital raise was structured as an accelerated bookbuild and comprised a placing with existing and new institutional investors, and a retail offer in the UK on the PrimaryBid platform. Barclays Bank plc and J.P. Morgan Securities plc acted as joint global coordinators and joint bookrunners in respect of the placing. The capital raise represented 6.3% of Big Yellow’s existing issued ordinary share capital.
CMS Corporate Partner James Parkes commented: “It was a pleasure advising long standing client Big Yellow on another successful equity fundraise. It is encouraging to see investors support growth capital for great companies in these market conditions”.
Nicholas Vetch CBE, Executive Chairman of Big Yellow, said: “The net proceeds will allow us to expand capacity in London, our strongest market, and monetise land that we already own. It will also be marginally accretive to earnings in the short term, and the Directors expect it to be significantly so over the medium to long term.
We continue to have high conviction that REITs should be largely equity financed with low levels of debt and this placing is a continuation of that strategy”.
The CMS team was led by Corporate partners James Parkes and Jack Shepherd, with assistance from David Rivera (US counsel); and Sarah Etherington, Shadi Ameli-Savechi and Magnus Chisholm (Corporate).
Since advising Big Yellow on its IPO in 2000, CMS has helped Big Yellow raise approximately £567m through a series of equity placings.
