Brenntag, the global market leader in chemical distribution, has refinanced its existing syndicated loan agreement at an early stage, thus extending the term. The term of the new syndicated loan is now to end in January 2022 at the earliest.The previous syndicated loan had been scheduled to run until March 2019. At the same time, this move reduces interest expenses and brings about further improvements in the credit documentation.
The syndicated credit line is the most important financing instrument for the Brenntag Group, with a volume of around 1.7 billion EUR. With the term of the new syndicated loan, Brenntag has further improved the maturity profile of its overall debt and given it a very long-term horizon.
The transaction was placed within Brenntag’s existing banking syndicate and was significantly oversubscribed. The new loan documentation reflects Brenntag’s high creditworthiness and its excellent reputation on the capital markets.
Georg Müller, CFO of Brenntag AG: “With this transaction, we were able to make use of the excellent market conditions that exist at present in order to safeguard our most important financing instrument in the long term and to reduce the interest expense. The high oversubscription of the transaction is a clear indication of the great level of trust that our banking syndicate has in us. We are delighted about this and see it as a sign of Brenntag’s financial strength.”
The transaction was supported by a group of 19 banks from Brenntag’s existing banking syndicate. The bookrunners were Bank of America Merrill Lynch, BNP Paribas S.A. Niederlasung Deutschland, Commerzbank Aktiengesellschaft, Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, HSBC Trinkaus & Burkhardt AG, ING Bank, a branch of ING-DiBa AG, Landesbank Hessen-Thüringen Girozentrale, Mizuho Bank, Ltd., MUFG (Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group) and UniCredit Bank AG.
