CAIRO: Wind Telecom, the holding company of Egyptian telecoms tycoon Naguib Sawiris, said on Monday it had obtained "firm commitments" to refinance about €420 million ($575 million) of debt issued by one of its subsidiaries.
The firm said in a statement it had commitments from Merrill Lynch International, Citigroup Global Markets Limited, Goldman Sachs International and Morgan Stanley Bank International Limited to refinance the debt maturing on April 4, 2011.
The collateralized notes were issued by Weather Capital Special Purpose 1, a fully-owned subsidiary of Weather Capital Sarl, which is in turn a fully-owned subsidiary of Wind Telecom.
Wind Telecom is in a proposed deal to sell for over $6 billion a bundle of its telecom operations to Russian operator Vimpelcom. Wind Telecom owns over half of Cairo-based Orascom Telecom and all of Italian operator Wind.
