Dubai Duty Free is currently discussing a new $20m loan repricing exercise with lenders, according to Colm McLoughlin, Executive Vice Chairman, Dubai Duty Free.

 

This follows DDF’s finance facility for $750m last year on top of the earlier re-pricing of its $1.75bn debut loan facility -originally initiated the year before.

The extent of this potential new $20m financing for DDF just underlines the confidence that the banking sector has in the business and its ability to continue to perform strongly and consistently.

Speaking to TRBusiness this week, McLoughlin said: “We have been able to borrow over the last two years as I have told you before. We have been able to borrow two different loans from banks. Last year we borrowed 750 million dollars and the year before we borrowed 1.75 billion dollars and we have been able to reprice them and we are about to do so again.”

 

McLoughlin added: “I know that we are going to save ourselves $20m and I don’t mind if you say that we will save an additional $20m from an additional repricing.”

DDF originally mandated Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank, Emirates NBD Capital Limited and Standard Chartered Bank – and each of their respective affiliates – to arrange the senior unsecured conventional and Islamic financing facilities.

This included a conventional term loan and Islamic facilities, with the main purpose to finance the further development of Dubai International Airport (DIA) where DDF is the exclusive operator of duty free shops. This was also the purpose of the secondary loan financing.

The original reports covering all of these aforementioned loan transactions were covered by TRBusiness in the following stories and can be accessed here:

‘Dubai Duty Free financing hits $2.5bn’ (5 September, 2013) http://www.trbusiness.com/index.php/regional/middleeast/13801-dubai-duty-free-financing-hits-25bn.html

‘Dubai Duty Free re-prices $1.75bn loan’ (15 July 2013) http://www.trbusiness.com/index.php/regional/middleeast/13484-dubai-duty-free-re-prices-175bn-loan.html