hard · Private Credit & Debt documentation-covenants-terms
An 'equity cure' provision lets the sponsor cure a leverage-covenant breach by contributing equity, with the cured amount added to EBITDA for covenant purposes (an 'EBITDA cure'). The agreement caps cures at two in any four consecutive quarters and five over the life of the loan, but is silent on whether cure proceeds may be used to repay debt. The borrower breaches at quarter-end by a small margin.
Which single drafting gap most enables the sponsor to manufacture a perpetual cure with minimal cash, and why?
- The four-quarter and life-of-loan cure caps are too generous, allowing more cures than a healthy credit should ever require.
- Treating the cure as an EBITDA addition rather than mandating it be applied to prepay debt, since adding to EBITDA inflates the denominator and lets a tiny contribution swing a leverage ratio that itself is a multiple, requiring far less cash than actually deleveraging.
- The provision's silence on whether cure equity counts toward the equity-cushion calculation, which lets the sponsor double-count the same dollars.
- Allowing the cure at quarter-end rather than requiring it within a defined cure period after delivery of the compliance certificate, exposing the lender to a timing mismatch.
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