VEB to contribute 30% to $1 bln loan for RUSAL’s Taishet smelter

GORKI, Moscow Region, Dec 14 (PRIME) -- Russian state development bank Vnesheconombank (VEB) will organize a U.S. $1 billion syndicated loan for the Taishet aluminum smelter of aluminum giant UC RUSAL, and will provide 30% of the sum, VEB CEO Sergei Gorkov told reporters on Thursday.

“We approved a deal with Taishet today. The Taishet deal is very important for us, it amounts to about $1 billion. The deal will happen in the form of a syndicated loan together with other large Russian private banks. For the first time ever, VEB will act as an organizer of a syndicated loan in this deal, which is new experience for VEB,” he said without disclosing other participants of the syndicate.

“I can say that we have an adequate amount of participants, even more than we need for this deal. All conditions have been confirmed, as we have no doubt about the deal…VEB will finance 30% of it and is the organizer of the syndicate,” he said.

Construction of the smelter with a projected annual capacity of 750,000 tonnes of aluminum started in the Irkutsk Region in 2006, but was frozen in 2009 because of a global economic crisis. RUSAL has already invested more than $770 million in the project, and planned to attract project financing amounting to about $700 million to complete it.

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