Gulf banks to offer $250 million loan to Banque Misr
The bank may pay off the loan in three years
Dubai: A consortium of Gulf banks, including Saudi Arabia’s Al Ahli, UAE’s Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and Emirates NBD, and Qatar’s Khaleeji Commercial Bank, will jointly offer a loan of $250 million to Egypt’s Banque Misr, an Arabic daily reported.
This comes a few months after the bank finalised its largest syndicated term facility with a medium-term loan worth $1 billion to finance various projects and contribute to sustainable development, according to a recent statement.
The new loan, Al Arabiya reported citing sources, will be paid off in three years, and will be used for general financing of the bank, the second largest government lender in the country.
The bank initially planned to refinance the existing $550 million syndicated loan signed in 2018. However, the bank received about $1.2 billion in orders, about 200 per cent of the initial targeted amount, prompting it to increase the facility value and close the syndication at $1 billion with a final roll-over ratio of 181 per cent.
Egypt’s central bank announced earlier it had approved a set of rules under which it would be able to provide emergency liquidity to local lenders.
Banks can apply to receive emergency liquidity if they cannot get it from the interbank or financial markets, the central bank said in a statement.
Emergency liquidity will be made available only to solvent banks for a maximum period of 180 days, it said. It will be priced at a premium of at least 5 per cent above the overnight lending rate, it added.