Affinity links with GEM to fund buys

Nick Goodway12 April 2012

TELECOMS-to-internet group Affinity Internet has come up with a novel funding solution to its ambitions to take over rivals who are finding the going tough. It has struck a deal with New York private-equity group GEM Global Yield Fund.

That will give it access to £20m with which to make acquisitions by issuing up to that amount of shares to GEM, entirely at Affinity's option, any time over the next three years.

Since Affinity is now capitalised at only £37m that could give the New York investors up to 35% of the company. They will get their shares at a 10% discount to the market price but receive no fee nor warrants for the facility.

Affinity has also agreed a £1m working capital facility with Barclays, its main banker, and appointed a new finance director, Nicola Sawford, who previously worked for venture capitalists, the London Stock Exchange and the BBC.

First-quarter turnover more than trebled to £19m and losses before tax were slashed from £6.6m to £2.5m. Affinity shares slid 16p to 106 1/2p.

Create a FREE account to continue reading

eros

Registration is a free and easy way to support our journalism.

Join our community where you can: comment on stories; sign up to newsletters; enter competitions and access content on our app.

Your email address

Must be at least 6 characters, include an upper and lower case character and a number

You must be at least 18 years old to create an account

* Required fields

Already have an account? SIGN IN

By clicking Create Account you confirm that your data has been entered correctly and you have read and agree to our Terms of use , Cookie policy and Privacy policy .

This site is protected by reCAPTCHA and the Google Privacy Policy and Terms of Service apply.

Thank you for registering

Please refresh the page or navigate to another page on the site to be automatically logged in