7th Mar 2008 11:49
Quintain Estates & Development PLC07 March 2008 7 March 2008 Quintian Estates & Development PLC ("Quintain"/ "Company") QUINTAIN ANNOUNCES AGREEMENT OF NEW DEBT FACILITIES Quintain is pleased to announce that it has reached agreement with eightrelationship banks to refinance its current banking debt facilities which willresult in a significant increase to average maturity. Quintain has refinanced all its banking debt with a series of bi-lateral loans.The new loan facilities total £620m and have an average tenure of 5.6 years,with an average margin of 1.15% for the mixture of five and six year facilities. Earlier this year, Quintain announced that it had raised an additional £300million of debt since 30 September 2007 with an average maturity of 2 years asan interim measure pending this refinancing. All of this debt has been repaidand cancelled as part of this new exercise. Having completed this first trancheof debt raising Quintain has commenced negotiations with new relationship banksto create additional facilities under the same terms. Rebecca Worthington, Quintain's Finance Director, said: "We firmly believe that it is prudent to have longer maturity debt at this timeof economic volatility. These new competitive facilities enable us to focus onactivities that will generate shareholder value with confidence in thestrengthened surety and structure of our capital base. As with our previousfacilities, these new facilities have the potential to be used across theportfolio. "We are very pleased about the tremendous ongoing support for Quintain'sstrategy shown by our loyal group of relationship banks." At 31 December 2007 Quintain's net debt was £485m, with gearing standing at 45%compared with a gearing covenant of 110%. -ENDS- For further information please contact: Quintain Estates and Development plcRebecca WorthingtonTel: +44 (0) 20 7495 8968 Financial DynamicsStephanie Highett / Dido Laurimore / Laurence JonesTel: +44 (0) 20 7831 3113 This information is provided by RNS The company news service from the London Stock ExchangeRelated Shares:
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