Centrus advises GreenSquare on innovative treasury restructure

Transaction Overview

GreenSquare Group is an innovative provider of over 12,000 affordable homes across Wiltshire, Oxfordshire, and Gloucestershire with ambition to deliver more than 1,500 homes over the next 3 years. With a history tracing back to 1866, the current group structure comprising two primary RPs, formed with the partnership in 2008 of Oxford Citizens Housing Association and Westlea Housing Association (an LSVT).

Centrus was appointed as Treasury Advisor by GreenSquare to work with Board, Treasury Committee, and Management to develop a corporate finance strategy and ultimately deliver the comprehensive restructure that sought enhanced financial resilience, flexibility, and capacity to deliver new homes.

Centrus Solution

The innovative transaction delivered creates a global treasury structure enabling unfettered sharing of security and financial support between the primary RPs without necessitating legal consolidation, albeit that option has been obtained for the future. £350m of existing facilities were restructured with existing funders, including the legacy LSVT arrangements in Westlea, to deliver harmonised covenants, controls, and security arrangements across the group.

Added Benefits

Accessible gearing and security capacity has been doubled, financial arrangements have been simplified, whilst tangible value in legacy facilities has been retained. £50m of funding was refinanced via the capital markets and £140m of additional liquidity was procured from new and existing funders. The resulting structure, completed within five months, yields a broad, resilient, liquid financial profile to empower GreenSquare to deliver its core strategic objectives.

“Centrus provided invaluable support to GreenSquare throughout the series of inter-linked transactions. The advice provided assisted all strata of the organisation; from delivery of the strategy to Boards and Committees through to negotiation of documentation alongside the treasury team.

The timescales and constantly changing environment surrounding the transaction, made the task challenging. Centrus’ input into the process greatly assisted in the delivery of a funding structure which is not only fit for purpose now, but scalable for the future and will enable GreenSquare to deliver on its corporate objectives to provide homes for new and existing customers.”

James Tarrant, Head of Corporate Finance & Treasury – GreenSquare

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