Tuesday, Jun 30, 2009
LONDON (Dow Jones)--Italian telecommunications company Wind SpA has set the tranche size and price guidance on its EUR2.7 billion high-yield bond, one of the banks working on the deal said Tuesday.
The bond will be split into a $2.1 billion tranche and a EUR1.25 billion tranche, with both tranches expected to yield between 12.25% and 12.50%.
The company said the bond will have a maturity of 2017 and will rank pari passu, or equally, with the company's existing bonds.
The bond is expected to price Wednesday subject to market conditions.
Credit Suisse Group, Deutsche Bank AG and Banca IMI have been hired as global coordinators for the bond issue and BNP Paribas SA, Calyon, Citigroup, Goldman Sachs Group Inc., JP Morgan Chase & Co., Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, Royal Bank of Scotland Group PLC and UniCredit SpA are joint bookrunners.
Wind SpA said Monday that the proceeds of the bonds will be used to pre-pay Wind's EUR2 billion payment-in-kind loans, which mature in 2011, and to make a one-off payment of EUR500 million to its parent company Weather Investments.
Payment-in-kind, or PIK, loans are typically issued in bull markets and are loans on which interest can be paid via the issuance of new debt, rather than in cash.
The bond is the biggest European high-yield bond since October 2006.
-By Ainsley Thomson, Dow Jones Newswires; 44 20 7842 9318; ainsley.thomson@dowjones.com
(Alessandro Pasetti contributed to this report)
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
30-06-09 1240GMT
