OC and Slaughters lead on Whitbread's £59.5m coffee purchase
Osborne Clarke (OC) and Slaughter and May have taken lead roles on the £59.5m sale of Coffee Nation to the Whitbread Group. Coffee Nation, which operates 900 coffee vending machines throughout the UK, instructed OC in early January, with the negotiations beginning later that month. The UK top 50 firm's team was led by corporate partner Paul Cooper.
March 04, 2011 at 10:22 AM
2 minute read
Osborne Clarke (OC) and Slaughter and May have taken lead roles on the £59.5m sale of Coffee Nation to the Whitbread Group.
Coffee Nation, which operates 900 coffee vending machines throughout the UK, instructed OC in early January, with the negotiations beginning later that month. The UK top 50 firm's team was led by corporate partner Paul Cooper.
Slaughters advised Whitbread on the acquisition, fielding a team led by commercial partner Martin Hattrell. Whitbread also owns Costa, the UK's largest coffee shop chain.
Cooper said: "It was a rather swift deal because Milestone sourced the purchaser, so there didn't have to be an auction, and it was a trade deal so there weren't any financing issues.
"The happiness from our point of view also was the super return everyone got. Milestone and Coffee Nation's management and shareholders did very well out of the deal after only three years of ownership."
OC also advised Milestone on the management buyout of Coffee Nation in March 2008. Since then, the business has almost doubled its number of vending machines from 550 to 900 and has expanded into new markets such as universities, hospitals and businesses, and as a consequence, Milestone's exit returned nearly four times its original investment.
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