Middle East Loans

Trading of Saudi Aramco’s $12bn bond has slowed considerably since it was priced on Tuesday last week, but all five tranches have failed to rebound to reoffer, and the longer ones were 1.5 points down by Wednesday afternoon this week.

Bank are having to dig deep and increase their country lending limits to manage the vast amount of business expected to come from the Gulf as government expenditure across the region grows. The next big deal off the rank will be from Saudi Arabia's sovereign wealth fund, Public Investment Fund (PIF), which is expected to tap the loan market for a bridge loan of up to $11bn in coming months, bankers said, following its highly successful debut deal in September. Mariam Meskin reports.

Dubai-based property firm Damac has raised £175m to finance the development of its first luxury real estate project in London, Damac Tower. The deal comes amid prolonged Brexit uncertainty and a slump in the UAE’s real estate market.

Mubadala, Abu Dhabi's sovereign wealth fund, is due to close a $2bn loan refinancing in coming weeks, according to bankers familiar with the deal.

Teva Pharmaceutical Industries has completed a $2.3bn loan syndication, to replace a $3bn revolving credit facility.

Emirates NBD (ENBD) has renegotiated the price it is paying to buy Turkish lender Denizbank from Sberbank after the fall of the lira since the deal was first announced last year. Some bankers have wondered how the acquisition will be financed, but ENBD has told GlobalCapital the bank will not raise debt to fund the deal.

State oil company Saudi Aramco is expected to tap the bond market in the next fortnight for a deal that could be anywhere in the region of $7bn-$15bn, according to bankers in the region away from the deal. Estimates of the premium Aramco will have to pay over the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia curve is being discussed as negative to plus 15bp, depending on the size of the deal.

Aramco’s eagerly awaited $69.1bn deal to buy petrochemical firm Sabic landed this week, prompting speculation over the financing’s structure and timing. Loans bankers are expecting to cover a large portion of the deal and expect it will be well supported, writes Mariam Meskin.

Citi has appointed Elissar Farah Antonios as cluster head for the United Arab Emirates, the Levant and Iraq.

A slowdown in loans activity in Europe and the Middle East has thrown the market’s usual supply-and-demand dynamics out of balance. Now although international lenders are eager to lend, they are having to make concessions to borrowers.

Qatar National Bank Group (QNB) closed a €2bn term loan on Wednesday, getting a heavily oversubscribed deal that demonstrated strong lender appetite in its first return to the euro market for nearly three years.

Bahrain plans to raise debt in capital markets over the next year, and bankers believe it should get a positive response from the market as the country is expected to continue recovering from a period of economic instability.