People’s Leasing seeks $50 mln from ME banks
The People’s Leasing and Finance (PLC) which has been negotiating with some Middle Eastern banks in a bid to raise US$ 50 million has cleared all approvals with the Gulf bank credit committees and is awaiting a final set of approvals from the banks, officials said. “The Gulf banks have agreed to this loan and now only the loan syndication part is pending,” a PLC official told the Business Times. A syndicated loan is one that is granted by a group of lenders and is structured, arranged, and managed by one or a number of commercial banks or investment banks known as arrangers. The arrangers provide the investment-banking part of raising investor funding for an issuer seeking of capital.
“We recently raised US$10 million from the Middle East under the External Commercial Borrowing Scheme introduced via the government’s 2013 Budget. This is a similar attempt,” the official said, adding that Emirates NBD, the largest banking group in the Middle East in terms of assets is managing this process. He said they made contact with these parties during the Investor Forum ‘Invest Sri Lanka’ organised by the Colombo Stock Exchange (CSE), in association with Bloomberg Data Services recently in Dubai.
PLC will use $10 million borrowing of one year tenure to boost its working capital to improve its lending portfolio. The official added that $50 million is a part of a planned Rs. 30 billion fund raising for the 2013/14 financial year for PLC.
Sri Lanka is fast gaining pace as the hotspot for investment for funds and many fund managers have been making many trips into the country more frequently since the start of this year. Most recently a 2-day presentation of 10 leading local companies to some 20 fund managers was hosted by C T Smith Stockbrokers in Colombo. “There’s a genuine interest in Sri Lanka and they want to put money in this country,” a CT official told the Business Times.
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