OREANDA-NEWS. April 14, 2014. Metalloinvest (the “Company”) announces the completion of the deal announced on 19 March 2014 under the pre-export finance facility (“PXF”) with a club of international banks in the amount of USD 1,150 mn and the refinancing of the preceding syndicated loan.

The PXF is divided into two tranches: USD 850 mn will be redeemed in equal monthly instalments from April 2016 to March 2019; the second tranche of USD 300 mn will be fully repaid in one bullet amount at maturity in March 2016. Both tranches have floating interest rates linked to LIBOR.

Deutsche Bank Amsterdam branch, ING Bank NV and Societe Generale acted as Coordinators and Bookrunners. Senior Mandated Lead Arrangers (“MLA”) were UniCredit Bank, BNP Paribas (Suisse) SA and Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank. Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd and Credit Suisse AG participated in the deal as MLAs.

Pavel Mitrofanov, Deputy CEO – Chief Financial Officer of Metalloinvest, commented: “We are pleased to announce the completion of a large pre-export financing deal, which was fully used to refinance the previous syndicated loan. The demand from the creditors exceeded the deal volume by more than 20%. It is important to us that interest rates for both tranches are considerably lower than the interest rate on the preceding syndicated loan, and the margins over the 1 Month LIBOR rate are now in the range of 125-165 bps. It is worth noting that the Company significantly improved its debt maturity schedule. In particular, after the completion of the deal, the Company has almost no maturities due in 2014-2015. The only exception is the payment under RUB-denominated bonds due in March 2015 in the amount of RUB 25 bn. We are pleased that we had support from banks and were able to close the deal on these terms in the changed market conditions”.

Bernard Zonneveld, Global Head of Structured Metals and Energy Finance of ING Bank BV, added: “The indisputable success of this deal in the tough economic conditions once again demonstrated that international banks are ready to provide high level of support to and have a lot of confidence in Metalloinvest due to the Company’s prudent financial position. The signing of the deal was happening at the time of high volatility and significant uncertainty in the Russian loan market. Despite this, the Company and the organisers were able not only to successfully close the deal in a short time, but also achieve a substantial decrease of participation shares due to oversubscription”.

John Macnamara, Global Head of Structured Commodity Trade Finance for Deutsche Bank: “Beyond the glare of global events, the global real economy still demands that its fundamental materials get manufactured, exported and traded, and consequently, financed. Deutsche Bank is proud to support this financing of the real economy by our longstanding client and partner Metalloinvest, in association with our fellow global banks”.

Ilya Polyakov, Head of Coverage & Investment Banking for Russia/CIS at Societe Generale and Deputy CEO of Rosbank, commented: “Metalloinvest has been one of the few metals & mining companies worldwide that benefited from a rating upgrade in the past months. This rating upgrade by S&P to ‘BB’ underlines the group’s strong business profile and sound financial policy. The group’s core relationship banks have been able to look through the highly volatile market conditions to the credit quality of Metalloinvest as well as the professionalism and transparency of its management teams to successfully deliver a pre-export finance structure in benchmark size”.

The preceding syndicated loan in the amount of USD 3.1 bn was raised by Metalloinvest in April 2011. The Company repaid USD 700 mn of the facility in H1 2012 and a further USD 1,250 mn in H1 2013, ahead of schedule.