Wind Hellas Will Miss $50 Million of Debt Payments
By Kate Haywood and John Glover - Jun 30, 2010
Wind Hellas Telecommunications SA, the Greek mobile operator that restructured last year, will miss 40.5 million euros ($50 million) of debt payments due in the next two weeks, according to owner
Naguib Sawiris.
Creditors are being asked not to push Wind into default as it seeks to reorganize borrowings for the second time in seven months, the Egyptian billionaire said in an interview. The phone company’s business is being hurt by falling consumer confidence and spending after the implementation of austerity measures to ease the Greek budget deficit crisis.
More cash may be put into the Athens-based company “depending on the outcome of negotiations with creditors,” Sawiris, 56, said in the interview.
Wind Hellas faces a 17.5 million-euro payment today on its 250 million-euro revolving-credit facility maturing June 2012, according to Standard & Poor’s. The company must also make a 23 million-euro coupon payment on 1.2 billion euros of floating- rate notes due October 2012 on July 15, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Sawiris, who ranked 205th in Forbes magazine’s World’s Richest People list last year, owns Wind Hellas through his Weather Investments SpA holding company. He bought the company from the administrators after it moved its headquarters to London in August to go through a so-called prepackaged bankruptcy under U.K. law.
Competitive Position
“The first restructuring didn’t take out enough debt,” said
Alex Moss, head of high yield at Insight Investment Management in London, which oversees the equivalent of $150 billion of assets. “Add in its competitive position in the Greek market and that demand for its services fell off a cliff, and this is what you get.”
Insight doesn’t hold Wind Hellas bonds, Moss said.
Wind’s secured floating-rate notes fell 1 cent on the euro to 29 cents, the lowest ever, according to HSBC Holdings Plc prices on Bloomberg. Its 356 million euros of unsecured 8.5 percent notes due October 2013 were unchanged at 4 cents on the euro, also a record low.
Wind Hellas Will Miss $50 Million of Debt Payments - Bloomberg