Strong demand for British Land bond issue

8th Sep 2011 07:06

British Land, the FTSE 100 real estate investment trust, has managed to raise $480m in a bond issue, after increasing the size of the issue because of strong demand.The US placing, originally launched at $200m, was three times oversubscribed. The range of maturities in the bond issue is between 7 and 15 years, and there were 12 takers for the bonds.The financing has an average life of over 11 years and was swapped to £300m at an average floating rate of 146 basis points (1.45 percentage points) over the London interbank offered rate (LIBOR).After drawing funds and repaying revolving bank facilities, the group's weighted average debt maturity and interest rate, including share of joint venture and fund debt, is 9.7 years and 4.8%, respectively.The $480m comes on top of a £560m bank financing agreement and brings total financing raised since May to around £860m.BS