A consortium of seven banks has advanced a new seven year, £525m loan facility to refinance the Lakeside Shopping Centre in Thurrock in the UK.

Lakeside is owned and managed by Capital Shopping Centres, the leading UK prime regional shopping centre owner, manager and developer owned by UK and South African-listed real estate investment trust Liberty International PLC (LBT).

Opened in 1990, Lakeside is one of the UK's leading regional shopping centres providing 1.43m sq. ft. of retail floorspace.

The proceeds of the loan are being used together with the group's cash resources to redeem in full the current total outstanding loans of £545.8m secured on Lakeside otherwise repayable in July 2011, including the redemption at par of the £445.8m of associated CMBS notes.

The existing loan has a current funding cost of about 5.5%. The hedgingarrangements of the new loan require progressively greater levels of interest rate protection over time.

Based on the current yield curve, Capital Shopping Centres should see some interest savings during the initial years of the new loan.

The funding was arranged by WestImmo and Eurohypo and the lenders are DekaBank, Eurohypo, Helaba, Lloyds, Pfandbriefbank, Santander and WestImmo.

Eurohypo is facility agent and WestImmo was documentation agent.

The borrower was advised by Linklaters LLP and the lenders by Allen & Overy.

Liberty International's Finance Director, Ian Durant, commented: "Liberty International is pleased to have agreed a significant long term bank financing and this speaks well of the quality of Lakeside and the strong support that the group enjoys from its banking relationships.

"This 7 year loan substantially improves the group's overall debt maturity profile and refinances one of the group's largest debt maturities, leaving 2015 as the next significant date for repayment of CMBS related debt."

Source: I-Net Bridge