Deal of the year 2008 for KME

KME is honoured for the second time by the international magazine "Trade Finance" for an innovative financing contract.

KME has been awarded "Deal of the Year 2008" by the international magazine "Trade Finance" in recognition of an ECA-backed financing agreement with MCC - Mediocredito Centrale SpA (Unicredit Group) - and SACE SpA for a credit line of 103 million euros.

This comes just two years after winning "Deal of the Year 2006", amongst other international awards, for the complexity of the credit facilities and for the solutions implemented at a Pan-European level.

According to the magazine, the reason lies in the “fact that the corporate finance is backed by Sace, enabling a long-term facility to be provisioned. Sace had the foresight to come into this deal which gives KME the financial tools it needs at a very difficult time. Under the agreement, Sace will guarantee 70% of the amount, with an average pre-amortization period of 12 months and repayment due in eight years in semi-annual installments. Effectively the tenor is 10 years door-to-door”.

PierPaolo Di Fabio, corporate finance director at KME, who was highly instrumental in structuring and implementing the deal, says: "In a tough credit environment, this long term deal has combined, in an innovative way, a typical corporate loan structure with the ECA-backed facility benefits of having a very limited recourse to traditional bank credit lines but with a great degree of flexibility. In fact it allows the financing of potential future international acquisitions and industrial investments at a competitive market price."

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