European Locomotive Leasing has closed a €228m senior secured asset-based debt facility to refinance existing debt and to expand its fleet. DVB Bank SE led the club of six banks, acted as facility and security agent as well as the hedging bank. The lenders were advised by Allen & Overy while K&L Gates advised ELL. DVB Bank had funded the initial debt facility together with Siemens Bank for the financing of ELL’s first 50 Siemens Vectron locomotives in 2014.
Siemens has opened its new headquarters building in München. It has space for 1 200 employees and is designed to use exclusively renewable power and have annual CO2 emissions of 9 kg/m2.
Newag‘s Gliwice locomotive overhaul plant is to close, with its remaining work transferred to Nowy Sącz. Business at Gliwice had been hit by PKP Cargo‘s decision to take work in-house, and by passenger operators‘ increasing use of EMUs.
The Rail Working Group has sent a response to the Basel Committee on Banking Supervision at the Bank for International Settlements in relation to its consultation on reducing variation in credit risk-weighted assets. RWG argues that banks must be allowed to evaluate the additional security that they have financing rolling stock, especially once the Luxembourg Protocol is in force, and says that if the BIS insists on a standardised approach for asset based financing, this will significantly increase the cost of debt funding for rail operators as banks have to allocate much more capital to cover this.
