20/07/2010 - Salans Advises Continental AG On €750 Million Eurobond Issue

PRESS RELEASE

Contact:
Claudia Covaci
Marketing Manager
ccovaci@salans.com

Salans advises Continental AG on €750 million eurobond issue

Salans Bucharest has advised German auto parts supplier Continental Aktiengesellschaft on the Romanian aspects of a euro-denominated bond issue with an aggregated value of 750 million EUR.
 
The notes have a term of five years and will be issued by Conti-Gummi Finance B.V. and guaranteed by Continental Aktiengesellschaft and certain of its subsidiaries. The coupon interest rate 8.5% percent.  The net proceeds will be used to repay a portion of Continental Aktiengesellschaft’s syndicated bank facility and improve its debt maturity profile.

The Bucharest project team was supervised by Christopher Berlew, Salans Bucharest Managing Partner, and coordinated by Magdalena Raducanu, Managing Counsel and co-head of Salans' Banking & Finance practice, who worked closely with associates Oana Ionascu and Catalin Vlasceanu. The same team also acted for Continental Aktiengesellschaft in amendments to the company’s syndicated bank facilities announced at the end of 2009.

Said Salans' Christopher Berlew: "The figures speak for themselves about the magnitude of this project and we were happy to have successfully assisted on a part of it. We worked closely with our colleagues in Prague, Budapest, Bratislava, Warsaw and Madrid, who were also involved as local counsel to Conti in both the eurobond and syndicated bank facility transactions, once more demonstrating Salans’ capacity to handle complex cross-border financing and capital markets work".

Established in Romania 13 years ago, Salans Bucharest is part of the firm’s global network of 22 offices worldwide. The firm counts 32 lawyers in Bucharest and over 750 worldwide. The firm has built a strong reputation in corporate and M&A, litigation and arbitration, labour, energy and natural resources, real estate, banking and finance, insolvency and financial services.
Continental is one of the world’s leading automotive industry suppliers of a broad range of electronic systems and components, tires and non-tire rubber products. The company has 137,959 employees and in 2009 had sales of 20,095.7 million EUR.