Fresh funding for Icade and ASF

Icade and ASF have each recently taken out a loan, the former for €1.55bn and the latter for €1.785bn.

Vinci's motorway subsidiary has thus arranged a syndicated loan of €1.785bn. The company states that the offer put forward by the group was 1.5 times oversubscribed, evidence of a certain appetite among the financial institutions.

The banks are: Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ, Ltd.; Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank; HSBC France; Natixis; Société Générale Corporate & Investment Banking; Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria S.A.; Crédit Lyonnais; Barclays Bank PLC; BNP Paribas; Commerzbank Aktiengesellschaft and the Crédit Mutuel-CIC Group, represented by: Crédit Industriel et Commercial; Banque Fédérative du Crédit Mutuel; ING Bank; Lloyds Banking Group; Mizuho Corporate Bank; Royal Bank of Canada; The Royal Bank of Scotland plc; UniCredit.

The loan signed by Icade totals €1.55bn. The banking syndicate is made up of eight banks (BECM (Groupe Crédit Mutuel-CIC), BNP Paribas, Crédit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank, HSBC France, Lloyds TSB Bank PLC, Natixis and Société Générale). The €1.55bn loan is divided into three transactions:

- A medium-term credit facility of €625m with a five-year maturity (with 50% amortised in the fourth year), which will cover the combined medium-term needs of Icade and Silic;

- A revolving credit facility (RCF) of €550m with a three-year maturity, arranged to strengthen Icade's financial structure by increasing the lines available to it;

- A forward start facility of €375m with a three-year maturity starting in 2014, with straight-line amortisation each year, intended to pre-empt the refinancing of part of the 2014 maturity of Icade's €900m syndicated loan.

Each company emphasises the confidence the banks have shown in it. Part of each loan is intended, on the one hand, to shore up cash reserves, and on the other to help finance loans that are about to fall due. The notion of financial health is therefore a relative one.