Shareholders will lose out in the recently announced Telepizza restructuring agreement

TELEPIZZA has survived and will live to deliver pizzas another day.

Bondholders and Santander, the fast-food company’s biggest creditor, signed an agreement on May 2 that has saved the Spanish multinational chain.

Sources close to the operation told Spain’s financial daily, Cinco Dias, that the private equity investors and the bank agreed to a write-down of around half of Telepizza’s liabilities, estimated at approximately €400 million, in exchange for 100 per cent of the company.

As a result, the bondholders headed by the Oak Hill, Blantyre, HIG, Fortress and Treo are now majority shareholders in the company, renamed Food Delivery Brands, and own 75 per cent of the capital.

Santander lent Telepizza €40 million that was guaranteed by Spain’s Official Credit Institute (ICO) during the pandemic.  A Telepizza statement had announced at the time that it needed between €95 and €115 million to cope with its problems and that the situation created by the Covid restrictions had endangered the company’s ability to meet its liquidity needs.

Santander and ICO itself, together with other financial bodies which have yet to be named, will now share the remaining 25 per cent between them.

Shareholders including KKR, Arta, Torreal, J Safra Group and Altamar, who lose their entire stake, have come off worst in the deal.

Telepizza, which was originally founded in Madrid as Pizza Phone by Leopoldo Fernandez Pujaz, a Cuban-born US businessman, in 1987.

There are now more than 1,600 Telepizza outlets worldwide, of which 694 are located in Spain.