Global insurance company MetLife has provided a
£250 million loan to UK-based rolling stock leasing company
Porterbrook.

Porterbrook has 1,800 passenger vehicles and
over 2,000 new freight vehicles for lease to UK train operating
companies.

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MetLife insures 70 million customers across
the Americas, Asia Pacific and Europe. The New York
City-headquartered company has $501.7 billion of assets under
management.

The insurer’s 25-year amortizing loan will
prepay Porterbrook’s existing debt, which was used by a Deutsche
Bank-led consortium of investors, including Antin Infrastructure,
Lloyds and Canadian institutional investor OP Trust, to acquire the
lessor in December 2008.

The consortium acquired the company with a
£1.5bn bank loan, comprising £500m loans maturing in 2011, 2013 and
2015. Porterbrook issued £520m of bonds in June 2010 to refinance
the first maturity. MetLife bought some of those bonds.

Porterbrook said the latest loan’s terms are
substantially in line with the company’s existing bond issuance. It
added that by halving the amount of debt maturing in 2013, the
company is less exposed to market conditions when it looks to
complete a further bond issue over the next 12 to 18
months. 

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Paul Francis, managing director for
Porterbrook said: “Porterbrook management and shareholders are
pleased to have successfully raised £250 million and further
diversified the group’s funding sources. The facility has the
longest maturity in the sector and comes with no additional
covenants than our existing bonds which we issued in 2010.”

The loan was rated BBB by Standard &
Poor’s.

JP Morgan were financial advisors to
Porterbrook on the latest loan deal, while Milbank were legal
advisors.