Houlihan Lokey Advises Lenders of Zayo

Houlihan Lokey is pleased to announce the successful amend and extend transaction of Zayo Group Holdings (Zayo). The firm served as the exclusive financial advisor to an ad hoc group of lenders and noteholders of the company’s $8.6 billion of secured and unsecured debt. As part of this transaction, Houlihan Lokey also advised certain members of the ad hoc group who provided a structured financing commitment to help fund Zayo’s planned acquisition of certain Crown Castle digital infrastructure assets.

Zayo is a leading communications infrastructure company specializing in fiber-based connectivity solutions. The company owns and operates approximately 150,000 fiber route miles across North America, serving hyperscaler cloud providers, telecommunications carriers, and large enterprises. In March 2025, the company announced it would be pursuing a $4.25 billion acquisition of Crown Castle’s fiber assets, providing increased presence in key metro geographies and an expansion of Zayo’s middle-market enterprise reach.

Houlihan Lokey was engaged by the ad hoc group in late 2024 to negotiate an amend and extend transaction with Zayo. After months of negotiations, in August 2025, the ad hoc group and Zayo announced a transaction support agreement that ultimately received support from more than 99% of the company’s creditors. The transaction extended the company’s 2027 and 2028 maturities, enhanced creditor protections and collateral package, and enabled the company to execute on its business plan and ABS financing strategy. The key tenets of the transaction include:

• Secured and unsecured debt maturities extended to 2030.
• Enhanced economics and collateral package for all exchanged debt, including participation fees and immediate rate increases that escalate over time, in addition to incremental rate enhancements for secured debt if certain paydown thresholds are not met going forward.
• $2.0 billion cash paydown (~27 points) for participating secured debt paid at close, with mandatory paydowns required from proceeds from future ABS raises at Zayo.
• Uptier of $200 million of exchanged unsecured debt into first-lien first-out secured debt in exchange for maturity extension.
• $1.3 billion in financing sources to facilitate the company’s acquisition of Crown Castle’s fiber assets (including $900 million funded by certain ad hoc group lenders and $400 million through an intercompany loan).
• Lender-friendly credit document modifications.

The transaction closed on September 26, 2025.

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