K4K designs and retails a wide range of children’s educational and nursery products which promote safety and simulate learning and development.
K4k had operations in Europe and the Middle-East
K4K was experiencing financial difficulties due to increased material costs, operational inefficiencies and a downturn in trading in the Middle-East. K4K had introduced a Chief Restructuring Officer (‘CRO’) to manage cash and provide the runway to execute a sales process.
There was a complex inter-company dynamic with the foreign subsidiaries relying on the UK company for finance, marketing and product development support. The company were also being evicted from their manufacturing plant in Romania which required a new solution to be secured prior to a transaction concluding to ensure continuity of supply. A deal was also agreed pre-sale with the entity in Dubai which would complete post-transaction.
BDO’s Special Situations M&A Team was introduced to run an accelerated M&A process by, the sponsor, Connection Capital. BDO worked closely with the CRO to maximise the transaction runway in order to deliver best value.
Following an extensive sales process BDO delivered a successful sales for the Romanian entity and the UK business.
A pre-packaged transaction was concluded to Merino Private Equity’s, Tobar Group (trading as Hawkins Bazaar), who purchased the business and assets of the UK company.