Russia’s Expobank has mandated Commerzbank, RZB and ZAO Raiffeisenbank Austria (RBA), and VTB Bank as mandated lead arrangers to arrange a US$ 20mn syndicated trade-related term loan facility.

 

The facility, which pays a margin of 275bp per year, has a tenor of 364 days and will be used for financing and refinancing of the borrower’s financing contracts.

 

General syndication has closed.

 

Participants were invited to join as follows: Arrangers with US$4mn at 80bp; co-arrangers at US$3mn at 70bp; lead managers with US$2mn at 60bp; managers with US$1mn at 50bp.

 

Expobank was founded by Wimm-Bill-Dann (WBD) (Russian food manufacturer) in 1994. In the course of preparing for its IPO in 2001, WBD divested its non-core assets.

 

Expobank was one of these non-core assets. The bank was acquired by MDM Bank. MDM subsequently sold Expobank to Kirill Yakubovskiy and Andrey Vdovin in the same year.

 

In 2002, Pavel Maslovskiy and Peter Hambro each obtained an option to acquire a 25% stake before 2010. In April 2007 the option contract for sale of interest in the bank to Hambro and Maslovsky was exercised.