A team of HFW lawyers in London and Paris, led by head of ship finance John Forrester, has advised Nordea Bank Norge ASA as facility agent on a $750m forward start senior secured facility for Belgian-listed tanker owner Euronav NV.
The deal, which is the largest financing deal seen in the tanker market since the financial crisis hit, was heavily over-subscribed and involves a syndicate of 14 lenders led by Nordea Bank Norge ASA and DnB NOR Bank ASA as lead arrangers and bookrunners with ABN Amro Bank N.V., Fortis Bank SA/NV, Credit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, Danish Ship Finance, Danske Bank A/S, ING Belgium SA/NV and Skandinaviska Enskilda Banken AB (publ) as other lead arrangers. ITF International Transport Finance AG and ScotiaBank (Ireland) Limited acted as co-arrangers. The other lenders were Banque LBLux S.A., KBC Bank NV and Dexia Bank Belgium SA/NV.
The facility comprises a $500m term loan facility and a $250m non-amortising revolving credit facility and will be used for the purpose of refinancing Euronav’s remaining indebtedness under its $1.6 billion credit facility agreement dated 13 April 2005 and for the company’s general corporate and working capital purposes. However, the “forward start” nature of the facility means that it is not available for drawing until mid-March 2012. That allows Euronav to keep in place a more favourable interest rate margin under its existing facility until the drawdown date in 2012 whilst securing the long-term refinancing in the interim.
The security package to be put in place on drawdown will include ship mortgages over 22 of the wholly-owned vessels in Euronav’s fleet, comprising 1 ULCC, 7 VLCCs and 14 Suezmaxes. Those vessels are registered variously in France, Belgium and Greece. HFW Paris advised on the form of French mortgages. Advice on Belgian law and Greek law was provided respectively by Fransen Luyten and Theo V. Sioufas & Co. Advice was also taken on Norwegian law from BA-HR in respect of security over bank accounts in Norway. Euronav was represented by its own in-house legal team.
The HFW team consisted of John Forrester (Partner) and Katherine Noble (Associate) in London and Janet Butterworth (Partner) and Anna Braly (Associate) in Paris.
