Seat: searching for Seat’s Silver bullet

When Seat Pagine Gialle agreed a partial buy-out in 2003, it was Europe’s largest leveraged deal. But this poster-child for leveraged buy-outs now risks becoming a textbook study of what happens when such deals go awry. The Italian directories business has an enterprise value of E3.6bn and is struggling under E3.1bn of debt. This week it revealed it was in talks with Royal Bank of Scotland about loosening covenants on its borrowings with the UK lender. Seat is forecast to make operating profit...