Sidara locks in USD 1.35 bn in financing — and sets itself up for more down the line

Our friends at Sidara, a Dubai-headquartered planning, design, engineering, and project management giant, locked in USD 1.35 bn in five-year financing — a syndicated multicurrency term loan and revolving credit facility that folds the group’s various borrowing arrangements into a single platform, the Dubai-based engineering and consulting group said in a statement yesterday. The platform is internally named Project Helios and carries an accordion clause that could double total commitments, giving Sidara room to draw more later without renegotiating the entire structure, our friend Nader Aboushadi, Sidara’s group chief treasurer, tells us.

The timing is notable for two reasons. First, the facility lands right after Sidara’s takeover of UK-listed Wood Group in March, in which Sidara assumed roughly USD 1.6 bn of Wood’s debt and funneled USD 450 mn in cash to stabilize a company that had spent years working through liquidity strain. Second, it comes at a time when a shaky ceasefire continues to pose geopolitical risk — and still closed at a “favorable price,” Aboushadi says.

The capital gives Sidara “the financial flexibility and institutional infrastructure to support the successful integration of Wood,” Chairman and CEO of Sidara Talal Shair said. It’s both a “refinancing of existing Sidara debt” and a move that helps it “strongly absorb” the Wood transaction while building long-term capacity, Aboushadi says.

Who’s involved? First Abu Dhabi Bank, Arab Bank, and Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank led the syndicate.