Alstria Office secures EUR 630m loan with five banks

Hamburg-based Alstria Office REIT has secured a new EUR 630 mln loan with five banks, allowing for the full refinancing of the previous syndicated loan, which was due to mature at the end of November 2011. The new loan was arranged solely by UniCredit Bank and underwritten by Berlin-Hannoversche Hypothekenbank, Eurohypo Aktiengesellschaft,
HSH Nordbank and Natixis.

In total, Alstria has refinanced EUR 646 mln, with the additional EUR 16 mln being paid out of the company's available cash. The refinancing allows Alstria to significantly improve its overall debt maturity profile by increasing the average debt maturity from 2.4 years to 5.1 years.

'Our ability to execute one of the largest real estate financings in Continental Europe is a testimony to the strength of our assets, and the trust of our banking partners in the ability of Alstria to deliver', said Alexander Dexne, CFO of Alstria.

'We anticipate a massive demand for refinancing in the real estate market coming up in 2011-2013 and expect that it might lead to a liquidity crunch in the market. We have been focussing our effort on moving any debt maturity beyond 2013, and have successfully managed to do that in one of the most difficult market environments', said Olivier Elamine, CEO of Alstria office REIT. 'We wanted Alstria to be able to solely focus on the opportunities that we expect will come to the market, and this is exactly were we are today'.

The new credit agreement has a maturity of five years. The starting margin on the new loan will be 160 bps and is dependent on the Loan-To-Value-Ratio (LTV). The current LTV for the new credit agreement is 58.4%.