Qatar National Bank has secured a $2.5 billion syndicated loan with a five-year term, with most of the money coming from Asian banks, according to a Bloomberg report carried by Zawya. QNB will use the funds to refinance a facility it signed three years ago.
The loan ended up larger than planned. The bank went to the market for $2 billion and increased the amount once demand from lenders became clear. More than 20 banks from around the world joined the syndicate, according to people familiar with the deal who spoke to Bloomberg. In a syndicated loan, a group of banks lend jointly to one borrower and share the risk under a single set of terms.
Five institutions led the transaction as mandated lead arrangers and bookrunners: DBS Bank, HSBC Holdings, Industrial and Commercial Bank of China, Mizuho Bank and Standard Chartered. Pricing is set at 75 basis points over the Secured Overnight Financing Rate, the US dollar benchmark used for most international bank loans, which the Federal Reserve Bank of New York publishes daily. The proceeds will repay a $2 billion three-year facility that QNB arranged in October 2023, which means the older loan is reaching the end of its term this month. Moving to a five-year structure pushes the bank’s next repayment of this kind out to 2031.
The deal adds to a run of Qatari borrowing that leans heavily on lenders in Asia. QatarEnergy, the state energy company, has taken a $3 billion five-year loan from four Chinese financial institutions, and the same report said it is in talks to raise $5 billion or more to pay for liquefied natural gas shipping. The QatarEnergy loan runs for five years, the same term as QNB’s new facility. Taken together, the QNB facility and the QatarEnergy loans show Asian banks, and Chinese lenders in particular, committing large sums to the country’s biggest borrowers.
For QNB, the upsizing gives the bank more dollar liquidity than it first sought and a longer maturity profile at a fixed margin over the benchmark rate. The bank has not published further details on how the extra $500 million will be used beyond the refinancing. Bankers will watch whether QatarEnergy’s planned shipping loan draws a similar line-up of Asian lenders, which would confirm how far the source of funding for Qatar’s state-linked borrowers has shifted towards the East.
