LONDON, Oct 21 (Reuters) – British buyout house Montagu
Private Equity signed a debt restructuring deal late on Tuesday
that will see it walk away from British packaging company
Linpac, two sources familiar with the process said.

Lenders will take on the business as a going concern,
reducing the company’s debt by 320 million pounds ($529.3
million) — 50 percent of its debt burden, the sources said.

LONDON (Reuters) – Hedge fund Harbinger Capital Partners said on Tuesday it had lost more than a quarter of its stake in sugar maker Tate & Lyle as it has been unable to reclaim them from collapsed bank Lehman Brothers.

Harbinger said 17.7 million shares — worth 80 million pounds at current prices — will not be recovered and further shares held by Lehman may also be lost.

LONDON, Oct 13 (Reuters) – The British government on Tuesday
watered down proposed new solvency rules for big airports,
dropping plans for a special administration regime to ensure
airports stay open even if their operators go bust.

The industry had claimed the government’s original plan
would have meant that investors in airport infrastructure
projects could demand higher returns, pushing up the cost of
financing development projects.

LONDON (Reuters) – Despite an equities rally and an uptick in high-yield debt, owners of struggling companies are putting in only a fraction of the cash needed for restructuring, leaving banks with the bill for billions worth of loans.

Private-equity owned companies, which borrowed hundreds of billions of euros through leveraged buyouts in the middle of the decade, will depend on the banks to roll over their debts on easy terms, analysts say.

LONDON, Oct 7 (Reuters) – Britain’s biggest bingo club
operator Gala Coral may end up in the hands of lenders if a
proposal from a group of debt holders is accepted, two people
with knowledge of the situation told Reuters.

The gaming company — owned by private equity firms Candover
<CDI.L>, Cinven [CINV.UL] and Permira [PERM.UL] — is in talks
with lenders to avoid breaching the terms of its 2.7 billion
pounds ($4.3 billion) of bank debt.

NEW YORK/LONDON, Oct 5 (Reuters) – The administrator for
Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc’s <LEHMQ.PK> European unit on
Monday unveiled a new plan to dole out the collapsed investment
bank’s assets directly to creditors.

The administrators, said they would put forward a
“contractual solution” that would allow them to distribute “a
very significant portion” of the $8.9 billion in securities
assets currently under their control, according to a statement
published on the administrators’ website.

LONDON (Reuters) – Private equity firms specializing in turning around ailing companies are preparing to strike a series of deals based more on operational improvement than balance-sheet fixes.

With European banks and, to a lesser extent companies, readying a wave of disposals of battered companies, a new phase of restructuring will call on acquirers with a wide set of skills.

LONDON (Reuters) – Private equity houses are set to scoop up a raft of cheap assets as companies slim down, now that the worst of the crisis is over, brightening the future for buy-outs after two years of gridlock.

Private equity has up to $1 trillion of potential spending power — the so-called “dry powder” — but after a difficult year firms will be cautious when making investments, Reuters journalists at the Reuters Restructuring summit were told.