Fishery Wriggling Free of Restrictive Loan

Pesquera Diamante, among Peru’s top 4 fisheries by volume, is scheduled to be in New York today through Wednesday to meet with lenders. It is hoping to prepay an existing loan and raise a new facility with less restrictive covenants, says a banker who was invited to consider the new deal. It has mandated BBVA and Citi to lead the discussions with existing and new lenders. In August 2007, Diamante raised a $165m 5-year syndicated loan at Libor plus 350bp via Citi, with JPMorgan, BNP, BBVA and Santander as MLAs. It prepaid $80m of that loan in Q1, and will look to pay down the remainder of the facility this week, say bankers familiar with the process. It also wants to raise an $80m-$100m new loan with a less restrictive covenant package whose proceeds will be used to pay down what is left of the original facility and finance some of the company’s capex. A year ago, Diamante CEO Ricardo Bernales told LatinFinance his company would consider issuing bonds in the international markets to take out some of its debt. An IPO, possibly in Norway, was also an option being considered, he said. Diamante executives were not available for comment last week.