Qtel will pay interest on US$1.5bn loans in June

Qtel, the Qatari telco, will pay interest on US$1.5bn of medium-term notes on 10 June, the company said in a statement on the Qatar Exchange.
The telco, which is majority owned by the Qatari government, will pay US$53m in total on two notes: a US$900m…

Qtel, the Qatari telco, will pay interest on US$1.5bn of medium-term notes on 10 June, the company said in a statement on the Qatar Exchange.

The telco, which is majority owned by the Qatari government, will pay US$53m in total on two notes: a US$900m note paying 6.5% and a US$600m note yielding 8.75%.

Qtel’s US$900m note will mature in 2014 and its US$600m note in 2019.

On 17 May, Qtel announced that the general syndication of a new $2bn revolving credit facility had attracted US$3.86bn of commitments. Qtel will scale back the commitments from the junior lenders and use the new facility to replace a much more expensive US$2bn forward-start facility that Qtel raised in September last year.

Qtel decided to launch the revolver once it felt that banks were willing to resume lending to international companies at significantly lower rates than at the peak of the crisis. The Qatari telco only used the forward-start loan, which paid a hefty 200bps above the London interbank offered rate, as a short-term means of refinancing an earlier US$2bn facility that was due to mature in November last year.