Leverkusen, Germany, December 13--Lanxess AG, a chemical company that is part of Bayer AG, said it has arranged a credit line of EUR 1.5 billion ($2B)with an international bank consortium led by Bank of America, Citibank, Commerzbank and Deutsche Bank.
The credit line will be used partly to repay the existing intercompany loan from Bayer in the first half of 2005 after the spin-off and as a liquidity reserve for the next five years.
Matthias Zachert, CFO of Lanxess, commented: "This move lays the foundation for a sound financial structure and allows us a high degree of financial flexibility in the coming years." He said the fact that the syndication was substantially oversubscribed shows an encouraging level of interest among banks in cooperating with Lanxess.
