EnBW renews syndicated credit line

Karlsruhe. EnBW Energie Baden-Württemberg AG yesterday signed a syndicated credit line with a facility amount of €1.5 billion and an option to increase the facility amount by €500 million. The credit line, provided as a syndicated facility by several banks, is used for general business purposes and replaces, ahead of schedule, the existing syndicated credit line that runs out in July 2021.

A new feature is that the borrowing costs are tied to EnBW’s sustainability performance. This means that EnBW’s borrowing costs are reduced or increased according to target attainment on selected sustainability indicators. In addition to the green corporate bonds that EnBW has already issued on several occasions, EnBW is consequently now incorporating sustainability aspects into its syndicated credit line for the first time.

The three selected sustainability indicators reflect both environmental and social criteria: CO2 intensity and the percentage of generation capacity accounted for by renewable energies have been selected as the environmental indicators. The social indicator is the system average interruption duration index (SAIDI), which tracks grid supply reliability.

The credit line is provided by a syndicate of 18 banks. Responsibility for coordination was assumed by BayernLB, Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA) and UniCredit Bank AG. The credit line was very well received in the market and substantially oversubscribed. It has an initial term of five years and can subsequently be extended twice over for one year at a time.