Shopping centre giant agrees €3bn green loan
Unbail-Rodamco-Westfield has become the latest real estate company to link its financing to sustainability credentials.
The shopping centre owner has refinanced more than €2.4bn (£2bn) of debt due to expire over the next three years with a new five-year revolving credit facility.
The new €3bn facility is linked to URW’s sustainable target score – a measure based on the landlord meeting particular KPIs on energy intensity, carbon emission reductions, the percentage of assets with BREEAM In-Use certification and the percentage of URW employees that have participated in CSR training. If URW achieves or exceeds the these target, the margin on its new debt will be reduced.
Unbail-Rodamco-Westfield has become the latest real estate company to link its financing to sustainability credentials.
The shopping centre owner has refinanced more than €2.4bn (£2bn) of debt due to expire over the next three years with a new five-year revolving credit facility.
The new €3bn facility is linked to URW’s sustainable target score – a measure based on the landlord meeting particular KPIs on energy intensity, carbon emission reductions, the percentage of assets with BREEAM In-Use certification and the percentage of URW employees that have participated in CSR training. If URW achieves or exceeds the these target, the margin on its new debt will be reduced.
URW said it had also committed to invest – independent of its sustainable target score – an amount equivalent to the potential margin reduction to finance internal sustainability projects.
The new green debt replaces a €1.6bn facility due to mature this year and a further €800m of commitments scheduled to mature in 2022, 2023 and 2024.
The debt has been agreed with a syndicate of 19 banks.
BNP Paribas acted as documentation agent, Natixis, SMBC Group, and Société Générale as sustainability coordinators. Deutsche Bank and HSBC were URW’s syndication agents, while Crédit Agricole acted as facility agent.
URW is the latest in a growing list of real estate firms switching their financing structures to sustainability linked facilities. Jay Joshi, group treasurer at Derwent London, one of the first movers into the green financing world, told EG in a special podcast focused on sustainable lending that the industry was just “one or two refinancings away from most financing in our sector being green”.
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