700 stores to close as Mattress Firm files for Chapter 11 protection

BY Fraser Tennant

Due to what it describes as “significant operational challenges”, specialty mattress retailer Mattress Firm has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in order to strengthen its balance sheet and optimise its store footprint.

The filing at the US Bankruptcy Court in Delaware gives the company access to new financing to support the business, establishes an efficient and orderly process for closing certain economically inefficient store locations, and provides for all trade creditors to continue being paid in full for goods and services provided.

Court documents reveal that Mattress Firm is projected to lose approximately $150m in fiscal year 2018. The company also has more than $1bn in liabilities and more than 50,000 creditors, with Atlanta-based mattress maker Simmons Manufacturing Co. its largest creditor at almost $65m.

“The process we have initiated will allow us to strengthen our balance sheet and accelerate the optimisation of our store portfolio,” said Steve Stagner, executive chairman, president and chief executive of Mattress Firm. “Leading up to the holiday shopping season, we will exit up to 700 stores in certain markets where we have too many locations in close proximity to each other.”

In conjunction with its restructuring plan, Mattress Firm has received commitments for approximately $250m in debtor-in-possession (DIP) financing, which, subject to court approval, will be available to support its ongoing operations during the Chapter 11 proceedings.

“We intend to use the additional liquidity from these actions to improve our product offering, provide greater value to our customers, open new stores in new markets, and strategically expand in existing markets where we see the greatest opportunities to serve our customers,” added Mr Stanger.

The company expects to complete the Chapter 11 restructuring process within two months and has announced commitments for $525m of senior secured credit facilities to fund its emergence from bankruptcy.

Founded in 1986, Mattress Firm has grown to be the largest specialty mattress retailer in the US, with stores in 49 states across the country. In 2016, the company was acquired by Steinhoff International Holdings, N.V.

Mr Stagner concluded: “We thank our suppliers and partners for their continued support. We will continue to provide unmatched value to our customers by offering the best quality beds at prices that fit any budget today, tomorrow and into the future.”

News: Steinhoff's Mattress Firm files for bankruptcy protection, closes stores

M&A appetite declines amid global uncertainty

BY Richard Summerfield

As fears of an escalating US-China trade war and uncertainty over Brexit abound, globally, companies’ appetite for M&A has fallen to a four-year low, according to EY’s biannual ‘Global Capital Confidence Barometer’ report.

Forty-six percent of global executives say that they plan to buy other firms in the next 12 months, a 10 percent decline from the previous year, according to EY. A further 46 percent of respondents to a survey of more than 2600 executives across 45 countries also said they saw regulation and geopolitical uncertainty as the biggest risk to dealmaking activity over the next year.

“Geopolitical, trade and tariff uncertainties have finally caused some dealmakers to hit the pause button,” said Steve Krouskos, EY Global Vice Chair, Transaction Advisory Services. “Despite stronger-than-anticipated first-half earnings and the undeniable strategic imperative for deals, we can expect this year to finish with much weaker M&A than how it started. The good news is that companies will likely take the break in action as an opportunity to focus on integrating the many deals undertaken over the past 12 months. This is likely to be just a pause, not a complete stop. Fundamentals and the strategic rationale for deals remain strong, and the appetite to acquire will likely grow toward the second half of 2019.”

The escalation of tension between the US and China has already led to an increase in tariffs, Brexit too could drive a tariff increase, though the outcome of the Brexit negotiations is still unknown, despite the close proximity of the UK’s March 2019 exit date. The outcome of the Brexit negotiations is causing some consternation and is a key focus for those executives surveyed. Forty-one percent of respondents would prefer the UK to enter an Economic Free Trade Agreement similar to Switzerland, while 22 percent would prefer a Free-Trade Agreement model similar to that between the EU and Canada. Five percent of executives globally prefer a second referendum of the UK’s EU membership, and 6 percent would prefer a World Trade Organisation rules-based outcome.

Despite the increased uncertainty and decline in global dealmaking appetites, confidence in the M&A market remains high. Ninety percent of respondents expect the market to improve over the next 12 months. For some companies, the coming year will enable them to focus on integrating the deals they have completed over the last few years.

Indeed, some companies intend to use M&A to overcome the ongoing global instability. Twenty percent of executives noted that they are focusing more on international opportunities, including within the UK, which is the number two M&A destination of choice for executives globally, up from fifth position in the April 2018 survey.

Report: Global Capital Confidence Barometer 19th edition

The evolving threat

BY Richard Summerfield

While cyber security threats are gaining in exposure and media coverage, many companies remain unprepared for a breach — a fact which is particularly worrying when one considers that cyber attackers are gaining vastly greater scale through new techniques, such as killchain compression and attack automation, according to Alert Logic’s ‘Critical Watch Report: The State of Threat Detection 2018’.

The report, which was completed following the analysis of more than 1 billion security anomalies, 7 million events and over 250,000 verified incidents, found that the traditional killchain has evolved. Today, 88 percent of killchain attacks are gaining efficiency and speed by combining what was formerly identified as the first five phases of such an attack — recon, weaponisation, delivery, exploitation and installation — into a single action. As a result, the new killchain is capable of creating near-instantaneous attacks that bypass many established security practices.

Automation has also emerged as an important and effective tool for cyber criminals who are able to launch random and recursive attacks which force organisations to alter the ways they asses risk. Cryptojacking has also become a major concern for organisations. Eighty-eight percent of recent WebLogic attacks were cryptojacking attempts. Worryingly, as cryptojacking attacks are highly automated and hit small, medium and enterprise-sized organisations indiscriminately and at similar rates, industry and size may no longer be reliable predictors of threat risk.

The report also found that web application attacks remain the most frequent and dominant type, with SQL injection attempts comprising 43 percent of all attacks observed.

“It’s no secret that attackers push the envelope and innovate attacks to abuse weaknesses anywhere they find them—in cloud and hybrid deployments, containerised environments, and on-premises systems,” said Rohit Dhamankar, vice president of Threat Intelligence Products at Alert Logic. “What is troublesome is the use of force-multipliers like automation to scale attacks for increased financial gain. This report demonstrates that attackers are gaining increasing sophistication in their ability to weaponise trusted techniques to exploit common vulnerabilities and misconfigurations for purposes such as cryptomining.”

Report: Critical Watch Report: State of Threat Detection 2018

BC Partners to acquire European cable and media operator from KKR

BY Fraser Tennant

In a deal which will boost its position as the communication and media leader in South Eastern Europe, United Group B.V. is to be acquired by private equity (PE) firm BC Partners from fellow investor KKR.

Following completion of the transaction, KKR, which manages multiple alternative asset classes, including PE, energy, infrastructure, real estate and credit, will maintain a substantial minority stake.

The financial terms of the transaction have not been disclosed.

“We are delighted to partner with United Group’s management team and KKR to support the company’s next phase of growth,” said Nikos Stathopoulos, a partner at BC Partners. “United Group is a high-quality asset, with defensive growth characteristics, leading infrastructure, differentiated content and loyal customers. Its attractive and integrated business model and regional leadership position it well for further organic and acquisitive growth.”

Since its inception, BC Partners’ PE team has completed 104 PE investments in companies with a total enterprise value of €129bn and is currently investing its tenth private equity fund.

Investing in United Group since 2014, KKR has helped the company to become the leading provider of communications and media services in South Eastern Europe. United Group’s fibre and cable networks have the largest presence in the region, covering 1.82 million homes which benefit from broadband speeds substantially higher than local peers and high quality local and international content.

Over the past 18 years, United Group has expanded its presence through both organic growth and acquisitions, now employing over 3400 staff. “We are proud of the way in which United Group has developed,” said Jean-Pierre Saad, managing director at KKR. “It is a great example of a truly convergent operator across communications and media with market leading product innovation and services.”

Acting as advisers to BC Partners are Morgan Stanley and LionTree, while Credit-Suisse is advising United Group. The transaction is subject to relevant regulatory approvals.

Mr Saad concluded: “We will remain closely committed to the further development of United Group and are looking forward to working with BC Partners and the management team to further strengthen the company’s growth.”

News: BC Partners snaps up majority ownership of cable firm United Group from KKR

Majority of US companies lack compliance automation strategies, claims new report

BY Fraser Tennant

Compliance leaders in the US are yet to fully automate their compliance activities in order to respond more efficiently to shifting regulatory expectations and a changing risk landscape, according to a new KPMG report.

The report, ‘Innovating compliance through automation’, found that only one in five chief information officers (CIOs) and chief compliance officers (CCOs) said they had a well-defined strategy to automate compliance in the next two years. However, 90 percent did say they had plans to increase funding for automation in the coming years.

Among the report’s key findings: (i) 36 percent of CIOs and CCOs said that attention from leadership and stakeholders is a top challenge they have encountered or expect to encounter in implementing compliance automation; (ii) when asked what is limiting their ability to automate compliance activities, 70 percent of CIOs and CCOs named data integrity and 67 percent pointed to data availability as leading factors; and (iii) 32 percent of CIOs and CCOs said the availability of resources to support automation is lacking.

Furthermore, CCOs and CIOs differ on their view of the subject matter knowledge their organisation requires to tackle compliance automation, with approximately 18 percent of CCOs stating knowledge was lacking while 40 percent of CIOs pinpointed this as the main automating compliance challenge.

"Companies are automating routine operational tasks to increase efficiencies and lower costs," said Amy Matsuo, a principal in KPMG’s risk consulting services and national leader of regulatory insights practice. "The next step is for organisations to pivot from using automation in operational processes to deploying it for compliance analytic and predictive purposes. To do so, they must first prioritise compliance activities that can be automated while setting expected returns on investment."

According to the report, compliance activity priorities are based on product safety (42 percent), industry specific regulations (41 percent), cyber security and information protection (36 percent), privacy (29 percent), fraud (27 percent) and consumer protection (22 percent) regulatory obligation categories.

Ms Matsuo concluded: "Organisations will need to identify personnel with the appropriate skills, knowledge and availability to undertake automation. This requires a unique skillset that blends an understanding of business operations, compliance issues and risk management with technological proficiency."

Report: Innovating compliance through automation