MUMBAI: ABN AMRO was the lead arranger for these facilities. These funds have been arranged in Bharti Cellular Limited a wholly owned subsidiary of Bharti Tele-Ventures Limited and would be deployed in expanding the mobile networks for Bharti’s 'AirTel' services spread across India, the company announced in an official release. Announcing this funding, Akhil Gupta, joint managing director - Bharti Tele-Ventures Ltd. said "The Indian telecom sector is witnessing an unprecedented & explosive growth. Bharti is fully equipped with all key resources in place to take a leadership position in this growth phase. This funding at very attractive costs is not only a significant vote of confidence in Bharti’s capabilities & strong management team but is a testimony to the true potential of the Indian telecom market." This funding of USD 315 million has been arranged at an approximate spread of 160 basis points over LIBOR and the foreign currency risk is fully hedged. The current overall cost is approximately 5.50 per cent p.a. including end-to-end costs such as foreign currency hedge costs. This long term funding has an average tenure of over 5 years. The company has a net debt to funded equity ratio of less than 0.65 while maintaining healthy interest cover of over three times. In the recent past, Bharti Tele-Ventures has attracted over USD 1 billion of equity investments by its partners led by, Singtel and Warburg Pincus. This is amongst the largest FDI ever received by any Indian company. Strategically the company has opted for the combination of the following Long-term foreign currency loans to diversify its investor base. A syndicated loan of $125 million was raised from a consortium of banks with a door-to-door maturity of 6 years. The mandated bank for the syndication was ABN Amro. The lead bankers for this syndication also included DBS Bank, Standard Chartered Bank and West LB. The entire loan has been drawn down and the forex principal exposure has been fully hedged. A Buyer Credit facility with Export Kredit Namnden (EKN), Sweden acting as the Export Credit Agency (ECA) helped raise $160.2 million. The lender of the facility is ABN Amro. Its door-to-door maturity is 10 years. The disbursement of this loan is linked to the equipment supplies from Ericsson. An additional $30 Million Loan facility was raised from Nordic Investment Bank (NIB), a multi lateral agency with a door-to-door maturity of 8 years. ABN AMRO was also involved in structuring and securitising a Short Term Bridge Loan of 360 Crores for Bharti Tele-Ventures Limited. This securitisation structure was recognised as “Deal of the Year 2002” by Business India, and this loan was accorded the highest short-term credit rating of A1+ (SO). Bharti also recently announced its quarterly results for quarter ending December ’02. The, over 100% revenue growth to Rs 847 crores, during this quarter, puts Bharti amongst the top five listed service companies in India. During the quarter ended December 31, 2002, the operating profit (EBITDA) of BTVL grew by 98% to 240 crores. Infact, the company has registered a sequential growth in every parameter compared to the previous quarter. This strong performance is a result of Bharti’s unprecedented quick and successful rollout of its 16 new projects, clearly demonstrating its strong management capability and execution skills. This has provided the Company with an early mover advantage resulting in a high share of customers in its new mobile and fixed line operations. Bharti’s customer base has grown from 13 lakhs to 31 lakhs within a period of twelve months. Further, the growth of long distance traffic on India’s mobile networks has been very encouraging and has put its long distance (STD/ISD) business on the growth path. Last month Bharti received security clearance for its submarine cable landing station to offer international data services. This is likely to further improve its long distance revenues.