Emirates Bank signs $106m finance facility with MIS

Dubai: Emirates Bank, the UAE's second biggest bank by assets, signed yesterday a $106 million project fin-ance facility with Maritime Industrial Services Co to build two oil rigs.

The 30 month facility will finance the building of two Friede & Goldman designed oil rigs at the MIS Sharjah yards under MIS' contract with Norway's Mosvold Jackup Ltd.

MIS, established in the Middle East in 1979, has grown from being a fabrication and repair company for drilling rigs to a leading services contractor carrying out construction and fabrication in the oil and gas, petrochemical and marine industries.

Its operations in the Gulf are spread across UAE, Saudi Arabia, Oman, Kuwait and Iran.

MIS has expanded its activities to include the building of jack-up drilling rigs and has signed a $250 million agreement with Mosvold Jackup Ltd. for construction of two such rigs.

Jerry Smith, MIS' managing director told a news conference the order helps bring some of the rig-building business to the region from the US, China and Singapore.

MIS will deliver the first rig in 26 months and the second in 30 months.

Smith said 2006 has been a record year for MIS as it had signed two Mosvold contracts with two options for future rig contracts. It had also completed a $80 million private placement and a listing of MIS on Norwegian OTC market.

MIS expects to achieve revenue and profit growth of 80-90 per cent in 2006 and is carrying a record order backlog of over $300 million for 2007 and 2008.

"This deal gave us an opportunity to understand a business segment (construction of oil rigs) which we envisage will gather momentum in the UAE," said Rajan Khetarpal, head of structured finance and syndications at Emirates Bank.

Khetarpal did not give any pricing details for the facility but said the structured finance and syndications unit had underwritten loans worth $4 billion in 2006.