OREANDA-NEWS. On June 17, 2008 OJSC “MMC “Norilsk Nickel” (“Norilsk Nickel” or the “Company”) and a group of western financial institutions signed a US\\$ 1,5 billion credit facility agreement.

The facility was arranged and fully underwritten by the Bank of Tokyo- Mitsubishi UFJ Ltd, Bayerische Hypo- und Vereinsbank AG (a member of the UniCredit Group), Calyon, ING Bank N.V., Societe Generale, Sumitomo Mitsui Finance Dublin Limited, The Royal Bank of Scotland plc and WestLB AG (together the Mandated Lead Arrangers).

Societe Generale is acting as Co-ordinating Mandated Lead Arranger and Documentation Agent.
Calyon is acting as Facility and Security Agent.

The facility has a tenor of 3 years and is structured in the form of a US\\$750,000,000 nickel and copper term pre-export finance facility, a US\\$550,000,000 nickel and copper revolving pre-export finance facility and a US\\$200,000,000 unsecured revolving credit facility.
The Company pays a margin of 85 bps over Libor on the pre-export tranche and 100bps over Libor on the unsecured tranche.

Norilsk Nickel is the world’s leading producer of nickel and palladium, one of the largest producers of platinum and one of the world top ten producers of copper. For the full year of 2007, Norilsk Nickel recorded the highest sales revenues of US\\$17.1 billion with the highest EBITDA in the Group’s history amounting to US\\$10,2 billion. The Company is rated Baa2 by Moody's Investors Service and BBB- by Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings.