About Us

Our Purpose

Cube Credit is New Zealand’s leading debt advisor, providing services to a number of New Zealand corporate borrowers and their shareholders. Types of clients that use our services include boards and executive teams of listed corporate businesses; shareholders of privately owned corporate businesses; private equity sponsors; infrastructure sponsors; and Iwi asset managers.

These clients are either raising debt in the Australasian debt markets or are seeking an in-depth strategic review of existing financing arrangements to ensure their financing structure and terms are fit for purpose, meet short and long-term strategic goals of the business, and are optimised for current market conditions.

Our Approach

We undertake robust due diligence on our client’s business, quickly gaining an understanding of strategic objectives, commercial drivers, and key risks. Cube Credit undertakes a desktop credit rating analysis to form a view on the appropriateness of the business's capital structure and existing financing arrangements.

For a debt raising process, we will then optimise the financing structure to ensure it is fit-for-purpose over the short and long-term, while also leading engagement and negotiations with prospective lenders from start to finish.

Our Areas of Expertise

Cube Credit specialises in complex and event driven transactions requiring bespoke financing solutions, and the provision of independent strategic debt advice to company boards, financial sponsors and senior management teams. We have experience across the full spectrum of debt products and extensive relationships with domestic and offshore banks, private credit funds, and other non-bank lenders. Our services will be of most value in the following situations:

  • Advising companies on their debt capacity and debt terms, including structural changes that would make them more attractive to lenders
  • Borrowers moving to multi-lender structures, including bilateral, club and syndicated arrangements
  • Private equity led leveraged buyouts seeking stretched senior, unitranche or term loan B financing structures
  • Corporate domestic or cross-border mergers and acquisitions
  • Multiple debt providers across the capital structure and intercreditor arrangements involving super-senior, senior, subordinated, or mezzanine finance
  • Borrowers seeking diversification of their financing into new debt markets, either within New Zealand or in offshore markets
  • Borrowers seeking improved gearing, terms and pricing through bankruptcy remote project finance, asset backed finance, securitisation or structured real estate finance

The Team

Cube Credit was established in 2019 by Raynor McMahon, Craig McManaway and Nick Whitwell, to address a gap in the New Zealand market for independent, specialist debt advisory services. The current team has over 100 years of combined experience in the corporate and institutional banking and specialised finance markets, both in New Zealand and offshore.

   

How We Can Help

New Zealand’s debt markets have become complex and dynamic. Traditional bank lenders are experiencing increased regulation, needing to constantly review their capital allocation and portfolio mix. At the same time there is increasing appetite from private credit funds, other non-bank lenders and offshore banks, all of whom have a targeted focus on specific types of borrowers and financing structures.

This landscape is becoming increasingly harder for borrowers to navigate and ensure that they are benefiting from optimal solutions in an efficient manner. Engaging an independent debt advisor ensures borrowers are accessing the right debt product and markets on competitive terms, and that there is strong alignment between the financing structure and the specific strategies and financial objectives of each individual borrower.

Before a debt raising is launched, borrowers should spend time evaluating the options available to them, consider the pros and cons of each option and understand the type of process that should be run to maximise the chances of a successful outcome.

The key foundations to a successful debt raising are time, product awareness and relationships:

Time

Time

Borrowers need time to prepare for the process, manage multiple parties, benchmark different offers or structures and work through detailed debt terms sheets and finance documentation. Business owners, executives and financial sponsors are time poor – so it can be challenging to allocate enough time to adequately prepare for and manage the debt raising process in order to achieve an optimal and efficient outcome.

Awareness

Debt Product Awareness

Borrowers need to understand the full spectrum of debt products and types of lenders available to them so that they can obtain the most appropriate financing package to support the business strategy. In a dynamic environment Cube Credit is ‘in the market’ ensuring we are across the available universe of debt markets and active lenders, along with having a deep understanding of financing structures, pricing, and terms that may be suitable.

Relationships

Relationships

Long term relationships with multiple financial service providers are a key strategic requirement for any corporate business or financial sponsor. As businesses and their financing requirements grow, it can be difficult and time consuming to maintain or build new relationships with lenders or access alternate forms of debt finance. Cube Credit can intermediate to ensure access to the most appropriate lenders for each business and gain deeper insights from existing lenders who may not be willing to provide direct feedback to their clients.

Cube Credit brings a wealth of experience to help our clients prepare for and manage all aspects of their debt raising process. Our experience and strong process management focus will free up significant time to enable:

  • business owners and senior management to focus on operations and strategy; or,
  • financial sponsors to focus on vendor negotiations, investment thesis, due diligence, transitional arrangements and investment committee approvals.

We are
focussed on debt

We are a specialist debt advisory firm, reflecting the team’s extensive debt markets experience. We can provide an independent strategic review of existing financing arrangements, a view on debt capacity and achievable debt structures as well as run an effective end-to-end debt raising process.

We truly understand
our client’s business

We will embed ourselves within our client’s business and/or the transaction from the outset. This helps us understand their strategic objectives and what this means from a financing perspective, before prospective lenders are engaged. Presenting a well thought through and bankable structure from the outset supported by appropriate due diligence will make debt raising processes as efficient as possible.

We have an extensive
market network

We have a significant domestic and offshore network at our disposal, which we will utilise to obtain the best outcomes for our clients. Our relationships span banks, private credit funds, other non-bank lenders and a wide range of financial and professional services firms. We know that building and maintaining long term relationships with multiple financial service providers is important for successful businesses, and that sustainable long-term relationships take precedence over extracting “short term wins”.

We value confidentiality

We have extensive experience working discretely on confidential transactions and will always treat our client’s information with the highest level of confidentiality. This is of utmost importance to us. Our market reputations are critical to us, and we will never do anything that would tarnish ourselves, our business or our clients.

We are corporate
debt experts

We have a deep understanding of how all types of lenders approach transactions. This includes their approach to credit analysis, debt structuring, allocating internal risk grades, determining pricing levels, aggregation issues, ESG policies and appetite levels. Our expertise spans the full spectrum of lenders and debt products for both investment grade and sub investment grade borrowers. Given we are always ‘in the market’, we have constant visibility on trends in lender appetite, debt terms and pricing.

Our people know
how to run a transaction

We have a senior team and the people you meet at the start of an engagement are the ones controlling the transaction from start to finish. We are across the detail but also understand the big picture.

An important element of a successful debt raising is managing an efficient and professional process between client, lenders and other advisors. This is a core strength – the Cube Credit team all have vast experience in managing a transaction end-to-end and will take complete ownership and responsibility for the process.

We also know that each transaction is unique, so we do not use a “cookie cutter” approach when structuring a financing package. We pride ourselves on our ability to come up with bespoke arrangements that work for all parties and creatively navigate any issues that may arise.

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