Travers Smith Braithwaite has closed the £64.5m acquisition of the Torex Retail business using a variation of the ‘virtual bid’ deal structure developed by City rival Simmons & Simmons.

The structure – also known as an ‘accelerated IPO’ – sees debt providers and advisers team up and create their own bidding vehicle for a company, which is then floated to pay for it. A version of this was used to acquire Torex from iSOFT Group in a management buy-in.