Rescue

Since the 2019 collapse, Lebanese borrowers have faced lenders who are themselves insolvent, legal uncertainty over the currency of repayment and the value of “lollars”, and collateral that banks are only now releasing. Orion designs settlements that hold under those conditions — drawing on its partners’ work with the Banque du Liban on the rules governing loan classification and debt-to-property swaps — and documents them so that both sides can account for them properly.

Orion has designed recapitalisation and private equity fund structures for viable Lebanese companies, and its transaction studies are written to the standard of a full credit analysis, so that international finance institutions and impact investors can lend against them. Where a capital increase is the right answer, we structure it so that existing owners keep control of what they built while new investors receive the protection and governance they require.

Factoring is not debt. The factor buys the invoice at a discount and is repaid by the client’s customer, so the company’s leverage falls while its cash rises. With credit insurance from European and regional insurers covering default, Lebanese exporters can offer deferred payment terms to foreign buyers — and win orders they would otherwise lose — while importers buy raw materials without letters of credit. Orion executed the first credit-insured pilot transaction for a Lebanese food exporter in December 2023.

The round table is the last step of a long preparation. Each company arrives with an independent valuation, a business plan and a clear description of the transaction it seeks, so that the conversation starts at the level of terms rather than introductions. Orion draws on its mapping of Lebanese and diaspora investors and on two decades of relationships with private equity funds in the region.

Direct negotiations between Lebanese owners and investors most often fail on value. An independent valuation that applies several methodologies, prepared by an advisor both sides can trust, is what turns a conversation into a transaction.

A well-structured bond can replace short-term bank debt with long-term funding, lengthen the maturity profile of a restructured company and broaden its investor base beyond the banks. In the early 2000s Orion structured preferred share and fixed-income issues for Lebanese banks, including a performance-linked preferred share. The same skills now serve companies seeking life after bank lending.

Orion has advised on the sale of a shoe manufacturer to private investors, of an agro-food processor to a local competitor, of car dealerships to competitors, and on a leveraged buy-out of minority shareholders after a full valuation. Strategic partnerships — a foreign distributor or a brand willing to white-label a Lebanese product in pre-agreed markets — are often the fastest way to restore cash flow without diluting control.

In family-owned Lebanese companies, book value and real value rarely coincide. An independent valuation is often the first time owners see what their company is worth to an outside investor, and it frequently becomes the basis on which succession, buy-outs and new partnerships are settled.