La Poste, the French postal authority, will sign a euro3 billion ($2.74 billion) Euro-MTN programme in September. Deutsche Bank has won the mandate that will be its twentieth arrangership from the 84 new signings this year. The facility will be used to fund strategic acquisitions by La Poste amounting to Ffr7 billion over the next three years and will also help refinance Ffr10 billion-worth of debt. La Poste has existing ECP and French CP programmes too, but the new programme will annul these. The issuer wants to avoid direct market intervention and has appointed its subsidiary, AC Poste, as a market advisor off the facility. Philipe Bajou, chief executive officer at AC Poste, says: "Our role is to manage investor deposits and to study the market. We will ask the dealers to issue notes when we believe the market is ripe." AC Poste is also setting up a French CP programme to assure the liquidity of Groupe La Poste. The dealers are the arranger, ABN Amro, BNP Paribas, Salomon Smith Barney, Morgan Stanley Dean Witter and UBS Warburg.
August 11, 2000
