South Africa's Consol Glass priced a 420M euro 7-year senior secured note to finance its buyout by Brait Private Equity, a banker familiar with the sale said. The bond, the equivalent of just over 4BN South African rand, was priced at par with a coupon of 7.625%, the banker said, at the low end of final guidance that had already been ratcheted down from initial talk of 7.75 to 8%. The order book stood at over 2.5BN Euros when the yield guidance was cut on Monday, 26 March, a banking source said then. Citigroup & JP Morgan are managing the sale. Brait offered 19.50 rand per share for glass maker Consol, valuing the company at 6.2BN rand. The deal was approved by shareholders in February after Brait beat a competing offer from a consortium led by Ethos Private Equity. Senior secured notes have in recent months become a popular alternative to bank debt for some leveraged borrowers, as they usually contain less restrictive covenants than loans. At the same time they offer bond investors greater security than traditional high-yield bonds, which are usually unsecured. Moody's Investors service has rated the bonds B1, while Standard & Poor's assigned an equivalent B+. Both ratings are four notches below investment-grade status.
