Three new lenders have joined a club of five banks to refinance the £900m Liverpool ONE shopping centre.
French banks BNP Paribas and Société Générale and Japanese lender Sumitomo Mitsubishi will join incumbents Credit Agricole and Royal Bank of Scotland in the new financing package for the 1.8m sq ft mall, owned by the Grosvenor Liverpool Fund.
The banks are expected to provide a refinancing package of around £400m – a circa 45% loan-to-value ratio.
The previous loan, secured in 2011 to replace the original development finance, provided £385m, which was 65% of the then value of the property. Dekabank and Eurohypo were members of that lending club alongside RBS and Credit Agricole.
Sources said the current deal would see a reduction in the cost of the financing, with Grosvenor understood to have approached the banks involved looking for costs as low as 140bps over Libor.
Investors in the Grosvenor Liverpool Fund, which include Liverpool Victoria, Hermes and ADIA, injected around £75m of extra equity into the mall during the 2011 refinancing. It is unclear whether the new funding will allow them to take any of that equity out.
All parties declined to comment.
