Italian aerospace and defence group Finmeccanica has raised €250m through a tap issue of its 4.5% senior notes, due January 2021.
The company, via subsidiary Finmeccanica Finance, initially raised €700m in a bond offering in November 2013 and has…
Italian aerospace and defence group Finmeccanica has raised €250m through a tap issue of its 4.5% senior notes, due January 2021.
The company, via subsidiary Finmeccanica Finance, initially raised €700m in a bond offering in November 2013 and has now upsized this to €950m.
The new notes, which were targeted exclusively at Italian and international institutional investors, priced at 99.564%, higher than that of the November issue.
The incremental debt was more than 4 times oversubscribed and was rated Ba1 by Moody’s, BB+ by Standard & Poor’s and BB+ by Fitch.
Net proceeds from the issuance will be used to refinance exiting debt as well as for working capital purposes. Despite the tenor of the new notes, the group debt average life remains at over 9 years.
Bookrunners and lead managers on the deal were Banca Intesa, BofA Merrill Lynch, Barclays, BBVA, BNP Paribas, Citigroup, Commerzbank, Crédit Agricole, Credit Suisse, Deutsche Bank, Goldman Sachs, HSBC, JP Morgan, Morgan Stanley, RBS, Santander, Société Générale and Unicredit.
Finmeccanica owns a number of space assets including a majority 67% holding in space systems services firm Telespazio, a 33% stake in satellite manufacturer Thales Alenia Space, and a 14% holding in Italian rocket equipment specialist Avio.
The latter is currently a sales target with interest coming from Thales Alenia Space, Airbus DS (Astrium) and Safran. Finmeccanica has itself been rumoured to be looking to up its stake in the company.
