Slovenia's Banka Celje signed a € 135mn syndicated amortising term loan facility on May 27 via mandated lead arrangers Bayerische Landesbank, DZ Bank, Deutsche Zentral-Genossenschaftsbank, Raiffeisen Zentralbank and UniCredit Group represented by Bank Austria Creditanstalt.

The three-year facility, which pays a margin of 50 basis points with a semi-annually amortizing structure had initially been launched at EUR100mn, but was increased at signing following an oversubscription.

The mandated lead arrangers were joined in syndication by HSH Nordbank (Luxembourg branch) at senior lead arranger level, Raiffeisenlandesbank Niederösterreich-Wien and Raiffeisenlandesbank Vorarlberg Waren-und Revisionsverband, Norddeutsche Landesbank Luxembourg and WGZ Bank as co-lead arrangers and BKS Bank AG and the Chinese Export-Import Bank as arrangers.

Banka Celje was ranked as the fourth-largest bank in Slovenia with a 5.49% market share and total assets of EUR 2.305bn as of 31 December 2007. The bank is publicly owned and its largest shareholder is Nova Ljubljanska Banka with an ownership share of 40.99%.