OAO Siberian Coal and Energy Company (Suek) has mandated Banque Societé Générale Vostok (BSGV), Societé Générale Corporate & Investment Banking (SG CIB), ZAO Raiffeisenbank Austria (RBRU) and RZB as mandated lead arranger to arrange a US$300mn four-year structured coal pre-export finance facility.

Repayment is in 36 monthly instalments starting 13 months after the signing.

First offtaker is Suek AG, Switzerland.

Final offtakers are: Glencore International and other “acceptable international offtakers”.

Sureties come from OAO Razrez Tugnuiskiy, OAO IK Sokolovskaya, OAO Kompaniya Vostibugol and OAO Razrez Borodinskiy.

Suek is Russia’s leading and one of the world’s top 10 coal producers with an output of 84.4mn tons accounting for 28% of total Russian coal production. The company operates over 70 production and auxiliary units located in 14 different regions of Russia. The company also owns stakes in over 22 regional energy companies and has the objective of creating Russia’s premier vertically integrated coal producer.

In 2005, Suek had sales in excess of US$1.9bn. During that year, the company successfully increased its sales to the more lucrative export market, which represented circa 23% of its sales in volume (18.8mn tons) and 51% of its sales in value. Suek has now forged strong commercial ties with reputable foreign customers including Glencore, Noble, Powergen UK, Sumitomo, SSM, Energi E2 and BHP Billiton to name a few.