Middle East Loans

Saudi Arabia’s Southern Province Cement Co has signed a SR700m ($185.7m) Islamic financing with National Commercial Bank.

Dubai’s recent rollover of $10bn in debt extended to it by the United Arab Emirates’ central bank was widely hailed at the time as a positive by market participants. But the lack of forthcoming detail since on the new terms and tenors of the arrangement has prompted concern for some investors.

Undaunted by Turkey’s domestic economic and political uncertainty, the country’s participation banks are lining up to to hit the international market with deals, say bankers. Turkiye Finans looks likely to lead the pack and could bring both a dollar sukuk and murabaha financing.

Oman’s Bank Muscat has continued its funding drive by signing a $600m term loan just days after announcing plans for a $1.2bn increase to its EMTN programme and a Or500m ($1.3bn) sukuk programme.

The Dubai Multi Commodity Centre Brokerage has partnered up with an interdealer broker for the first time to jointly market commodity murabaha (Islamic financings) on its DMCC Tradeflow platform.

Kuwait's Zain Group has signed an $800m five year revolving credit facility less than a week after Commercial Bank of Qatar signed the first Middle Eastern loan this year.

The Middle East syndicated loan market this week finally fired up its engines when Ooredoo approached banks for a loan of up to $1bn and Commercial Bank of Qatar signed the first deal in the region this year.

Saudi Arabian telecoms firm Mobily has signed two Shariah-compliant financing agreements totalling Sr2.1bn ($533m) with Nordic export credit agencies, to fund the acquisition of equipment from Ericsson and Nokia Siemens Network (NSN).

Qatar telecoms firm Ooredoo has approached banks for a loan of up to $1bn in what bankers expected to be a club deal.

The Middle East syndicated loan market has finally fired up its engines after Commercial Bank of Qatar signed the first deal in the region this year, according to Dealogic data.

The Egyptian Company for Mobile Services (Mobinil) has signed an E£2.26bn ($324m) syndicated loan to refinance bank debt and repay bonds due to mature in the next two years.

Russian issuers have finally returned to the market this year, with both Sberbank and Russian Agricultural Bank printing dollar bonds this week. RAB's $500m deal is a tap of its outstanding $800m 2018s, while Sberbank's note is a $1bn 10 year non call five tier two bond, printed under the Central Bank of Russia’s clarified writedown language for Basel III compliant debt.