A group of five banks, co-ordinated by ING Bank, has issued a €416mn loan to Ukrainian energy company DTEK.

The loan has two tranches of three and five- year tenors and will be primarily used for unspecified capital expenditure.

The syndicate is made up of ING, Sberbank (Russia), Gazprombank, UniCredit Austria and Sberbank (Switzerland). ING was advised on the deal by CMS Cameron McKenna.

Nick Vozianov, director of syndicated finance at ING Bank tells GTR that the combination of Russian and European financing can now be seen on “almost every deal” in the CIS region. Vozianov is hoping that other banks will follow ING’s lead in increasing their exposure to the Ukrainian market.

He says: “Not many banks can do it nowadays, but it’s an interesting market. The return is very generous, so it’s attractive in a world where lots of pricing thresholds fell in the past year or so. But competition is coming into play again now.”

DTEK is Ukraine’s largest privately-held, vertically-integrated energy company and deals primarily in coal mining and electricity generation and distribution.

Law firm CMS has also increased its activity in Ukraine this year. Earlier in 2012, it advised a syndicate also involving Unicredit and ING on a US$100mn acquisition of Ukrainian agribusiness Kernel Holding.