Kirkland & Ellis advised Atlas Luxco S.à r.l., a company controlled by Xavier Niel, in connection with the debt financing of the concurrent public offers in the U.S. and Sweden to the shareholders in Millicom International Cellular S.A. (NASDAQ U.S.: TIGO, Nasdaq Stockholm: TIGO_SDB) (Millicom) to tender all their common shares and Swedish depositary receipt in Millicom.
Millicom is a leading provider of fixed and mobile telecommunications services in Latin America. The financing of the take private offer consists of $8 billion of debt via an interim facilities agreement. The intention is to replace or refinance all or a substantial part of the interim facilities with long-term financing consisting of a $2.6 billion term loan facility, a $100 million debt service revolving facility, a $3.8 million backstop bridge facility, a $600 million revolving credit facility to be entered into by Atlas Luxco S.à r.l. and a $500 million bridge facility to be entered into by Iliad Holding S.A.S. The offers expire on August 16, 2024. This transaction, one of the largest take-private deals of the year to date, involved a multidisciplinary Kirkland team and a complex cross-border process with committed financing arrangements entered into under multiple instruments in various jurisdictions.
The Kirkland team was led by debt finance partners Evgeny Zborovsky and James Collins; and capital markets partners Cedric Van den Borren and Antoine Lebienvenu. The team also included debt finance partner Kalish Mullen and associates Philipp Engel, Anastasis Voskos and Benjamin Lewis; capital markets associate Alejandro García; and tax partners Nadine Gelli, Anthony Antioch and Sonia Bouaffassa.
