Hammerson secures £420m revolver from eight banks

Hammerson, the UK shopping centre-focussed REIT, has agreed a new £420 million unsecured revolving credit facility with a syndicate of eight banks.

Lloyds Bank acted as co-ordinator for the facility, with HSBC Bank as facility agent. Three Asian banks participated in the loan; Bank of China (London branch), China Construction Bank (London branch), and Japan’s Mizuho Bank. The other members of the syndicate are Wells Fargo, Barclays and Crédit Industriel et Commercial.

The five-year facility can be extended to seven years and carries an initial margin of 90 basis points.

 The new loan will refinance Hammerson’s existing £150 million RCF, which was due to mature in April 2017. The existing facility had a margin of 150 bps.

After the cancellation of the £150 million facility, Hammerson has a net increase in undrawn loans of £270 million. The increase in liquidity will be used to partially refinance €1.5 billion of debt which the firm took on to fund its purchases of the Project Jewel Irish loan book from Ireland’s National Asset Management Agency (NAMA) last September, as well as the Grand Central shopping centre in Birmingham in January.

The new facility has been agreed on the same commercial terms as the £415 million RCF Hammerson signed in April 2015 with a syndicate of nine banks.

Following the signing of this new RCF, the total committed financing available to Hammerson is around £4.4 billion.

“It is encouraging that the RCF is on the same attractive terms that we set in April 2015 and four new major international banks have joined our relationship group. We believe this bank facility is the largest arranged by a UK property company so far this year,” said Timon Drakesmith, chief financial officer at Hammerson.