LondonMetric Property has agreed a new £400m unsecured revolving credit facility from a syndicate of five lenders.
The five-year loan can be extended for two years and increased to £500m. Its minimum margin is 130 bps and its opening margin is 150 bps.
The new loan lowers the average interest rate paid by the group from 3.72% to 3.37%. It also increases the average term of LondonMetric’s loans from 4.2 years to 5.4 years.
Listed propcos are looking for new corporate credit facilities in order to exploit the low interest rates available for the best-respected firms. Last week, Land Securities put in place a new £1.3bn revolving credit facility at 75 bps, a record low for a UK property company this cycle.
The new LondonMetric loan replaces five existing secured debt facilities valued at £269.3m and cuts the number of loans and debt facilities held by the company from six to two.
Royal Bank of Scotland acted as co-ordinator and facility agent. It was joined in the syndicate by Barclays, Abbey National Treasury Services, Wells Fargo and Lloyds.
LondonMetric also has a £196.2m, seven-year Helaba loan that remains in place.
Martin McGann, chief financial officer at LondonMetric, said: “The addition of an unsecured facility will provide greater operational flexibility to the group for our planned development programme and support our transactional activity.
“I am pleased that all of our secured lenders which are being refinanced are participating in the new facility and are joined by Barclays as a new lender to the company and by Santander [Abbey] as a returning lender.”
LondonMetric is repositioning its portfolio away from the office sector towards retailer-led distribution and out-of-town retail, which now account for 90% of its assets.
Lazard advised London-Metric on the new facility.
