Great River gets $150m loan

JAKARTA (JP): Publicly listed PT Great River International secured a US$150 million syndicated revolving credit facility with a maturity of five years in Singapore yesterday.

The company, a major integrated apparel manufacturer and distributor in Indonesia, said it would use the loan facility to increase its working capital.

The facility was the single largest foreign debt syndication raised by the firm to date.

It said that despite the current market's capacity to limit tax-absorption, the company was able to raise 50 percent of the finance.

The facility was arranged and fully underwritten by Deutsche Morgan Grenfell (Singapore) Ltd.

The co-arrangers are the Singapore branch of Bank Austria Aktiengesellschaft, Sakura Merchant Bank (Singapore) Ltd, and Tokyo-Mitsubishi International (Singapore) Ltd.

Great River's net profit rose 93 percent to Rp 25.7 billion (US$10.8 million) last year, while sales were up by 36 percent to Rp 268.9 billion. (bnt)