Strikeforce signs $122 mln debt restructuring deal
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 02.03.2010 |
Interfax
MOSCOW. March 1 (Interfax) - Strikeforce Mining and Resources Ltd (SMR), a member of Oleg Deripaska's Basic Element holding and Russia's largest ferromolybdenum producer, has signed a deal with lenders to refinance $122 million of debt.
The company said in a statement that it and lenders BNP Paribas, ING, Raiffeisen, Royal Bank of Scotland and Alfa-Bank (RTS: ALFB) had signed a deal on a four-year loan with a 15-month grace on principal debt repayment.
"The successful refinancing enables our company to focus on making our assets more efficient and sustaining our dynamic development, increasing our stake in the global ferromolybdenum market," said Anton Chertkov, the chairman of SMR's board of directors.
SMR finished renegotiating the debt in December 2009, when Alfa-Bank joined a consortium of banks that includes ABN Amro Bank N.V., BNP Paribas (Suisse) SA, ING bank N.V. and Raiffeisen Zentralbank Osterreich AG, with which the main terms of debt refinancing had already been agreed.
Bank of China has been selected to organize an IPO by SMR, a banking sector source told Interfax last week. "Bank of China will organize the SMR offering. It will organize all initial public offerings by BasEl companies on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange," the source said.
Bank of Chinа will be the sole organizer for the SMR IPO because the offering "will not be very large," the source said.
The Hong Kong Economic Times has said SMR was thinking of holding an initial public offering in Hong Kong in May and that a decision was due to be reached in February.
A memorandum for investors was ready in the fall of 2009, but aluminum giant UC RUSAL, BasEl's flagship unit, was the first of the holding's members to tap the Hong Kong market when it floated in January, delaying the SMR offering until May.
Strikeforce originally planned an IPO road show in Hong Kong in October 2008, a source close to the deal told Interfax. It would have been the first company with Russia-based assets on its balance sheet to list in Hong Kong. Bank of China and Morgan Stanley were said to be organizing the IPO, in which the company planned to raise about $200 million, placing up to 25% of shares on the exchange in Hong Kong.
But the company changed its mind about the listing when the markets started to nosedive and said it would re-address the IPO once the consequences of the global financial crisis had been assessed.
Strikeforce is the parent company of SoyuzMetalResource, which was established in 1997. It mines and processes copper and molybdenum concentrates and is Russia's biggest ferromolybdenum producer, which about 4% of global output
SoyuzMetalResource controls the Russia-based mining sector assets Sorsky and Zhirekensky copper-molybdenum mining and processing plants and Zhireken Ferromolybdenum Plant, and Kyrgyzstan-based Jany Jyld Gold Limited.
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