Search results for

Ghana EuroWeek understands that the Ghana Cocoa Board (Cocobod) has approached banks about refinancing its $260m dual tranche pre-export facility signed in September last year.

Alliance & Leicester Group Treasury is set to issue a £

Arcor, the German fixed line telephone subsidiary of Vodafone, has cleared the way for an IPO next year by clearing up a dispute with Deutsche Bahn (DB), the German state owned rail operator. Arcor had hoped to float in March this year but was forced to postpone the plan after DB, which owns 18% of the company, exercised a veto right to block the IPO. Arcor operates all of DB's signalling and DB was concerned that it would lose control over the company through the IPO.

Australia JP Morgan has been mandated to arrange a $300m, 364 day refinancing for Lend Lease (US) Finance Inc, guaranteed by parent company Lend Lease Corp.

Several Latin American issuers are set to come to market between now and the end of the year with structured deals as borrowers in the region seek ways to avoid the bad new issue conditions in the emerging markets. Jamaica's National Commercial Bank has completed a $125m five year credit card receivables issue and next week Banamex, the Mexican bank bought by Citibank, will price a $450m five year credit card merchant voucher transaction.

The A-2/P-2 sector has had a boost with the introduction of BG Energy Capital's (BG) $1 billion Euro-CP programme. The facility was signed in the first week of this month and made its first trade three days ago, on July 17. The A-2/P-2 sector has had an up and down ride for the last 12 months, but Ronan Redmond, senior dealer at BG, does not think a big marketing push is necessary. He says: "We forecast that the level of outstandings will be quite small, so we've left it to the dealers to market the programme to their own groups of investors. We do try, however, to attract as wide an investor base as possible." Barclays Capital is arranger off BG's facility, and Barry Gartner, head of Euro-CP origination at the bank, thinks the future could see an increase in interest for tier-two paper. He says: "The A2/P2 sector is more name-sensitive than the A1-P1 sector but is trading well at the moment. As soon as people become more comfortable with the rating it will develop into a busier market." BG abandoned its US CP programme earlier this year when spreads in that market blew out to about Libor+100 basis points. Now it only has small ambitions in the Euro-CP market. Redmond, at BG, says: "The next few months should be reasonably favourable in terms of our ability to get the funds we want. We are confident we can maintain outstandings of around $250 million." The dealers are the arranger, Citibank and Deutsche Bank.