The operation has been branded as operation of year 2010 in Trade Finance
KME Group the major world-wide manufacturer of half-finished cooper and its alloy, with headquarters in Florence and factories in Italy, Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Spain and China, has refinanced its activity and expansion by means of a mechanism of structured financing outstanding in the sector by its complexity and innovation in the scope of the ECA-backed financing (financing for credits in export). The operation has counted with ECIJA advising, with respect to the Spanish part.
The multi-jurisdictional operation of refinancing of KME Group has been selected ‘Operation of Year 2010′ by the prestigious publication Trade Finance Magazine.
The operation led by Deutsche Bank and a syndicate of banks, counts on duration of 55 months and replaces the previous mechanism of structured financing subscribed in 2006, by a total of € 475 million. The operation is structured in two sections, the first configured as a flexible finance for the € 343 million amount and guaranteed by means of product inventory, and the second as revolving for the € 132 million amount, guaranteed with fixed assets in Germany. This vehicle facilitates to KME Group a flexible financing of its activities and diminishes the impact of the fluctuation of the price of the raw materials in volatile periods.
The operation as a whole has counted with the legal advising of Hogan Lovells, Weil Gosthal Manges, ECIJA and other companies in the different implied jurisdictions. Maite Mascaró and Gabriel Nadal, partners of Corporate Finance and M&A of ECIJA, highlight that: ‘the complexity of this operation resides mainly in its multi-jurisdictional character, flexibility of the financing and system of guarantees and, once again, innovator configuration of the transaction’.