OREANDA-NEWS. April 01, 2013. GeoProMining ("GPM") has raised a debut 5-year USD 250,000,000 Term Loan Facility via a club of banks. The financing was arranged by Raiffeisen Bank International AG ("RBI AG") and Raiffeisenbank ("RBRU") (together "RBI Group"), Sberbank CIB (financing provided by Sberbank of Russia) and Sberbank (Switzerland) AG, a subsidiary company of Sberbank of Russia, and UniCredit (acting through UniCredit Bank and UniCredit Bank AG, London) (jointly "Mandated Lead Arrangers").

UniCredit Bank AG, London acted as Facility and Security Agent for the facility, Sberbank of Russia acted as Local Security Agent.

GPM has secured long-term financing through its Dutch holding company Karlou B.V. (the Netherlands) (acting as the Borrower) with a recourse to GPM’s Russian and Armenian key operating subsidiaries. The loan was split in two tranches according to the purposes of financing: the proceeds of Tranche A will be routed towards repayment of existing GPM’s indebtedness, whereas Tranche B funds will be used for general corporate purposes and CapEx. Both tranches carry similar 5-year tenor.

Classic term loan structure of the financing was fine tuned with a pre-export finance component — the loan is backed by deliveries of gold as one of the main commodities developed by GPM. Signed on 19th March 2013 the facility was promptly funded.

CMS Cameron McKenna LLP ("CMS") acted as legal advisors on behalf of the lenders and Allen & Overy Legal Services ("A&O") acted as legal advisors on behalf of the company.

GPM is an international, diversified metals resource holding company with three operating assets in two resource-rich countries. Its strategy aims to build on existing operations, taking advantage of significant opportunities for growth through brown field expansion, green field exploration, new mine development and resource expansion.