Our Danish corporate team consisting of partner Christian Scherfig, senior associates Rachael Hailey and Jacob Moltke Hoff, associate Ted Rosenbaum, junior associate Nick Skovsen and legal intern, Cecilie Gyrsting has acted as legal counsel for Tandlægen.dk – Holding A/S in a major deal regarding financing through corporate bonds.
The deal through which the client raised approximately EUR 53 million was closed on 1 July 2016. The deal included both a EUR 28 million investment from Danica Pension by issuance of corporate bonds and a EUR 25 million financing from Nykredit by a loan facility to be utilised upon completion of acquisitions.
It is unusual for Danish pension funds to invest in very early stage of companies such as Tandlægen.dk – Holding A/S. For this reason Danica Pension conditioned their investment on receiving a reinvestment right in case Tandlægen.dk – Holding A/S makes an exit. Accordingly, the deal was characterised as a combination of financing and investment.
The main purpose of the now closed deal for Tandlægen.dk – Holding A/S is to obtain liquidity to acquire more dental clinics throughout Denmark and thereby grow Tandlægen.dk to become Denmark's biggest dental chain.
CEO of Tandlægen.dk, Claus Kongsted had the following comment after closing the deal:
"Bird & Bird has yet again delivered outstanding legal advice and has shown a high level of legal expertise during the entire process from the beginning to finalising the deal where the team's project management has been exquisite. During the negotiations in this major deal, Bird & Bird has also proven themselves to be very commercially minded.
Bird & Bird presented a vibrant team with the right combination of commercial-, legal and negotiation skills. They demonstrated excellent project management as well as important tactical inputs to our senior management team. As a client we were never out of the comfort zone even though it was a complex deal with three individual parts and a comprehensive number of advisors. During the entire process. Due to Bird & Bird we were acting proactive and they demonstrated a vast expertise downplaying the fact that we are a 6 month old company.
I truly value working with lawyers that brings more to table than just legal advice. Christian Scherfig, the partner in charge, established the relationship to Danica Pension as investor. We appreciate this commercial insight and I am certain that we in the future will look back on this effort as a major milestone in our mutual effort to reach our goals in Tandlægen.dk.
It has been a true pleasure working with the Bird & Bird team on this deal."
Since November 2015 Bird & Bird has represented the group of founders with the establishment of a capital fund and the capital fund's continuous acquisition and consolidation of dental clinics in Denmark in a dental clinic chain called "Tandlægen.dk".
The purpose of the dental clinic chain is to consolidate the market and thereby achieve improvements, for example by better exploiting capacity and joining administration of clinics. The goal is to give the dentists the best possibility to focus on their speciality and customer care. Tandlægen.dk has since its establishment experienced significant growth and a highly increased interest for the brand new concept from both dentists and patients.
Even though Tandlægen.dk already contains more than 25 clinics in Denmark, it is their main goal to further increase the number of clinics in the following years and before the end of 2017 to own 60 clinics with total revenues of approximately EUR 150 m.
