OREANDA-NEWS. On 04 May 2008 was announced, that ZAO Raiffeisenbank signed an agreement, under which it is to receive a two-year syndicated loan in the amount of 1 billion USD at LIBOR + 0.65 per cent per annum. The proceeds of the facility will be used for general corporate funding requirements, including but not limited to trade related finance.

The syndicate organizers are 11 leading financial institutions: The Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi, Barclays Capital, Bayerische Landesbank, Citibank, Deutsche Bank, Intesa Sanpaolo Bank Ireland, Landesbank Baden-Wьrttemberg, Mizuho Corporate Bank, UniCredit Group, Wachovia Bank and WestLB AG. The syndicate also includes 13 international banks.

Raiffeisenbank’s CEO Johann Jonach commented on the transaction, "Organizing this transaction would have been challenging even in calmer times on the debt market. Until now, unsecured loans of this magnitude were available only to Sberbank. This loan is the largest syndicated transaction for a Russian financial institution since the global liquidity crunch began in August 2007. It is also the highest syndicated loan ever received by a member bank of the Raiffeisen International network in Central and Eastern Europe ever. We view the success of the transaction as a sign of the great trust that foreign investors place in us."

The original amount of the syndicated loan, which was announced in March, was 850 million USD. However, the market's strong interest in the transaction made it possible to increase the initial amount, resulting in oversubscription and a final sum of 1 billion USD. The loan was the second-largest ever for a Russian financial institution.