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Technology Stocks : Pacific Century CyberWorks (PCW, PCWKF) -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: ms.smartest.person who wrote (2406)	9/10/2000 11:51:46 PM
From: ms.smartest.person	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 4541

HONG KONG TELCO SEEKS BANKS FOR $4.875 BLN REFINANCING. loanmarketweek.com — Sanjit Singh Hong Kong’s Pacific Century CyberWorks (PCCW) wants to refinance $4.875 billion of a $12 billion short-term loan it raised earlier this year, and is talking to banks outside its existing group for the deal. A PCCW spokeswoman said that of the $12 billion raised in April to finance the acquisition of Cable & Wireless HKT, $3 billion has been repaid in cash from the reserves of the merged company. Another $3 billion is being repaid from funds Telstra Corp. is bringing into joint ventures with PCCW (LMW, 7/17). In addition, PCCW is putting $1.5 billion in cash and the same amount in convertible bonds into a number of joint ventures. PCCW is also transferring $1.125 billion in debt to an IP backbone company it is forming with Telstra, leaving $4.875 billion of the original $12 billion to refinance. The spokeswoman declined to say when the banks would be chosen, but did say PCCW will choose the firms that offer it the cheapest rates. The company wants credits with tenors between five and seven years, but the spokeswoman declined to comment on what sort of pricing it is looking at. A banker in Hong Kong said PCCW is taking advantage of strong liquidity in the market to refinance its debt. “The first loan is expensive…it pays 115 basis points over LIBOR for the first year and an additional 100 basis points for each subsequent year. If PCCW had gone to the second year, it would have paid 225 basis points over LIBOR,” he said. He added that he expects PCCW to split the refinancing into two to three tranches, and to pay between 50 and 115 basis points over LIBOR across all of them. The $12 billion loan was raised from about 25 banks; BOCI Capital, Barclays Capital Asia, HSBC Investment Bank and BNP Prime Peregrine were the lead arrangers and kept $3 billion on their books.