Ares Capital served as administrative agent, joint lead arranger and joint bookrunner for a $1.075 billion unitranche credit facility in support of private equity firm Thoma Bravo’s acquisition of Qlik Technologies.
Ares Capital is committing to and holding a large portion of the financing, which is the largest unitranche financing by a business development company to date. Ares Capital will also be leading the syndication process to attract additional lenders to the credit facility.
Other lead joint arrangers include Golub Capital and Varagon Capital Partners. The transaction is expected to close late in the third quarter, subject to customary closing conditions, including investor and regulatory approvals.
“Leading our industry’s first billion-dollar unitranche financing marks another milestone in the strong and consistent growth of Ares Capital,” said Kipp deVeer, Ares Capital CFO. “Thoma Bravo turned to us for certainty of closing as well as our scale and experience in closing large transactions at a time when banks continue to retrench from lending to corporate clients due to changes in regulation.”
“This unitranche financing was unprecedented in size and required a quick commitment from Ares and the syndicate,” said Erwin Mock, director of capital markets at Thoma Bravo. “Due to Ares Capital’s size and experience, we were confident that we could rely on them to arrange the financing of our acquisition of Qlik in a timely manner.”
Qlik is a leader in visual analytics with a portfolio of products that help businesses analyze and visualize data.