Overview
Tom Whelan, partner at law firm McDermott Will & Emery, said:
“The extension of the government loan scheme to private equity backed companies is welcome, although it will require the balance sheets of such companies to be restructured first to pass the EU’s eligibility test. Most likely, this will entail a conversion of existing shareholder debt to equity. It will be interesting to see how many private equity backed companies actually take advantage of the scheme given the change to the rules. I suspect it will be a very limited number, and in circumstances where the underlying company has no other option in order to ride out the second coronavirus wave and avoid insolvency.”