LPC: Banks bring back debt tied to Premiere Global acquisition

By Jonathan Schwarzberg

NEW YORK, March 29 (Reuters) - Banks that funded private equity firm Siris Capital Group's 2015 acquisition of web conferencing provider Premiere Global Services Inc (NYSE: PGI - news) are expected to return to market on Thursday with a new credit facility tied to the buyout, sources said.

Syndication (Other OTC: SYNJ - news) of the loans failed in December as volatility in the leveraged finance market made investors wary of risky credits and forced banks to keep several fully underwritten transactions on their books.

The new credit facility consists of a US$550m six-year facility and a US$50m five-year revolving credit facility.

Barclays (LSE: BARC.L - news) leads the new financing, along with SunTrust and Macquarie. The banks led the original proposed financing and provided the original commitments for the buyout, which included a US$500m first-lien loan, a US$150m second-lien loan and a US$50m revolver.

The credit facility originally went to the market with that structure, but the company dropped the second-lien term loan as the buyer added US$100m of preferred equity.

The bank meeting for the new credit facility is scheduled for Thursday.

Pricing has yet to be circulated. However, guidance on the original first-lien term loan rose to 600bp over Libor with a 1% floor before the loan was funded from the initial proposal of 525bp over Libor with a 1% floor.

The company also cut the loan maturity to six years from seven years and offered to remove the most favored nations sunset clause. It (Other OTC: ITGL - news) additionally cut the size of the incremental free and clear basket while extending soft call protection of 101 to one year from six months.

Atlanta (BSE: ATLANTA.BO - news) -based Premiere offers support for web, video and audio conferencing.

The buyout was announced Sept 10. The deal's close was announced December 8. (Reporting by Jonathan Schwarzberg; Editing By Michelle Sierra)