LONDON | Fri Apr 12, 2013 11:03am EDT
LONDON (Reuters) - British payment processing company WorldPay has successfully raised a new 700 million pound-equivalent ($1.08 billion) loan that will be used in part to pay a dividend to private equity owners that have also received permission to sell WorldPay's US business, bankers said.
Goldman Sachs (GS.N), Morgan Stanley (MS.N) and RBS (RBS.L) ran the process that included a dividend recapitalization - a process that sees more debt added to a company's existing borrowings and a dividend taken from it.
Of the new 700 million pounds-equivalent term loan, 250 million pounds was raised in sterling, 137.5 million pounds was raised in euros and 312.5 million pounds was raised in dollars, bankers said.
The new term loan matures in 2019 and was popular among debt investors eager to put cash to work following a dearth of deals this year, bankers added.
Around 340 million pounds of the new loan will be used to pay a dividend and the rest will be used to repay an expensive 343 million pound mezzanine loan that was put in place to back Advent and Bain's 2 billion pound buyout of WorldPay in 2010 that was backed by 970 million pounds of debt in total, according to Thomson Reuters LPC data.
Strong demand for the loan meant that interest margins Advent and Bain will pay to service the new term loan debt reduced by 25 bps on the sterling and euro portions and by 50 bps on the dollar portion, bankers said.
Interest margins on the sterling, euro and dollar portion are now 450 bps over Libor, 400 bps over Euribor and 350 bps over Libor respectively. All three tranches have a 1.25 percent Libor floor, 101 soft call for six months and were offered with a 99.5 Original Issue Discount, bankers said.
The new loans were quoted over par shortly after allocating on Europe's secondary loan market on Friday, TRLPC data shows.
WorldPay also received permission from its lenders to sell its U.S. operation, which makes up a third of WorldPay's business, and flexibility with the proceeds of the sale. The sale proceeds are expected to be used to pay down debt and to pay a second dividend to Advent and Bain.
The U.S. payments business is ranked around eleventh in the U.S. market and will be seen as an attractive opportunity for a rival to buy it to gain market share, bankers said.
($1 = 0.6496 British pounds)
(Editing by Sophie Walker)
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