Financing in brief

EWT is out with the €1.225bn debt facility supporting the acquisition of fellow German cable operator Telecolumbus, through bookrunner ING. Senior debt is split between a €125m term loan A paying 225bp over Libor, a €360m term loan B at 275bp and a €360m term loan C at 325bp. In addition, there is a €75m second-lien tranche paying 550bp and a €230m mezzanine loan paying 5.25% cash and 6.25% PIK. Bank lenders are invited to join on the A loan through to the revolver on a €25m ticket for 125bp, with the B, C and junior pieces offered at par to all lenders, banks and funds. Opening leverage is 4.6x to senior debt, 5x through to the second-lien tranche and 6.3x total debt. The deal will see EWT and Telecolumbus merge to create Orion Cable, which will be the third-largest cable operator in Germany and the largest Level 4 operator.

• Credit Suisse has joined Barclays, Goldman Sachs, HVB, Lehman Brothers and Mizuho Corporate Bank as bookrunner on the €3.5bn of debt backing the buyout of KION, the materials-handling unit of German industrial gases giant Linde. The deal is the largest buyout of a German company. KKR and Goldman Sachs Capital Partners are paying Linde €4bn for the company. The debt is expected to come to market this quarter. Credit Suisse had provided the staple financing for the deal. KION group is an umbrella company for forklift and industrial equipment brands Linde, STILL and OM. The group employs more than 20,000 people and had sales of about €3.6bn in 2005.
• HVB, Lehman Brothers and RBS have been mandated to arrange the circa €1bn financing backing Permira’s buyout of Hungarian chemicals company Borsodchem. The buyout has been approved by Hungary’s State Financial Supervisory and the EU Commission and is expected to be launched within the next few weeks. Permira bid Ft3,000 a share for all of Borsodchem Nyrt last month in an offer valuing the company at Ft228.5bn (US$1.1bn). The purchase is Permira’s first in Eastern Europe and it is hoping to benefit from growing demand for plastics in the region.
• Pricing on the €296m add-on to Gerresheimer Glas’s €505m buyout loan of last year has been flexed down after a strong response in syndication, through MLAs Credit Suisse and JPMorgan. Pricing on the €138m term loan B add-on and the €138m term loan C add-on have been cut by 25bp to 250bp and 300bp respectively. Last year’s buyout package was split between a €85m seven-year term loan at 225bp over Euribor, a €85m eight-year term loan at 275bp, a €85m nine-year term loan at 325bp, a €50m seven-year acquisition line and a €50m revolver at 225bp. Also, there was a €150m bridge to a high-yield bond. The deal funded Blackstone’s secondary buyout of Gerresheimer Glas from Investcorp.