What an information memorandum looks like.
The information memorandum is the document a lender reads first and forms its credit view from. Most borrowers have never seen one before their first raise, so this page shows the real thing: what the document is, what a credit officer reads it for, and a full specimen IM — built on a fictional borrower — to download and read.
The credit case, made in writing before anyone meets.
The IM is written by the adviser to make the case for lending to the borrower. In full form it runs forty to sixty pages and covers the business and what it does, the market and the company’s position in it, management and ownership, the historical financials and the forecast, the transaction itself and the funding ask — with the model exhibits set into the page rather than appended. It is issued under NDA to a controlled list of lenders, and it commits the borrower to nothing.
Its job is anticipation. A credit officer reading a well-built IM finds the questions they were going to ask already answered: what drives the revenue, where the customer concentration sits, why the forecast steps up and what makes the step deliverable, how the debt is serviced through a downside. Done properly, the document carries the borrower a long way into the process before anyone has spoken.
Serviceability first, candour throughout.
A lender reads an IM for serviceability above everything: can the business generate the cash to pay the interest and repay the debt on schedule, through a downside as well as the plan. Behind that sit the quality and durability of the earnings — recurring revenue counts for more than lumpy income, and EBITDA add-backs are scrutinised hard — then concentration, security, and whether the numbers tie cleanly to the audited accounts. A forecast that cannot survive a sensitivity costs credibility that is not recovered.
The tone matters as much as the content. Credit teams are wary of documents that read as pure sell-side gloss; a good IM is candid about the risks and shows the mitigants, because the lender will find the risks anyway and prefers a borrower who found them first. What a lender takes from the document is a view on the credit and a view on the people who prepared it — both are being assessed.
A full specimen IM, ready to read.
The specimen below is a complete Solon information memorandum on a fictional borrower, Northstar Components, raising a £10.5m refinancing. No real company, no live mandate, and nothing in it is an offer or advice — it exists to show the format, the depth and the standard of preparation a lender receives. Read it the way a credit officer would: start with the executive summary and the funding ask, then test whether every question it raises is answered somewhere in the document.