Bondholders Say No To Blackstone Loan Extension Request

Lenders to a €513M (£450M, $548M) portfolio of Nordic office and retail assets owned by Blackstone have declined to grant an extension to a loan expiring today.

A notice to owners of €297M in bonds secured against 46 properties said senior class A1 bondholders had not voted in favour of a one-year loan extension. The properties are clustered in and around the Finnish capital of Helsinki.

A threshold of 75% of bondholders approving the deal was not reached, according to the notice, which did not give any further information about what the action means for the portfolio. 

The properties are part of the portfolio of Sponda, the listed Finnish property company Blackstone took private in 2018 in a deal that gave the company an enterprise value of €3.8B (£3.4B). 

In a bondholder notice at the end of January, Blackstone and Sponda said that “due to ongoing macro-economic instability and market disruption, the senior company has requested a one year extension to the senior loan maturity date to 15 February 2024”.

In return, the companies said they would increase the interest rate being paid on the loan by 1.25% and pay a fee equivalent to 0.25% of the outstanding amount of the loan. 

Blackstone and Sponda put forward a business plan alongside the loan maturity extension request, outlining how they proposed to either sell or refinance the portfolio in the next year, the notice said. The proposal meant lenders would get a better return than enforcing the loan now, they said. 

The business plan involved splitting the assets into two groups, with 27 assets earmarked for sale as soon as possible and the other 19 earmarked for sale after asset management had been undertaken. 

As of last August, the loan was secured against a portfolio valued at €513M. The portfolio is 77% offices, 17% retail and 6% storage, comprising 418 tenants. It produces rent of €41M.

The portfolio secured by the loan is made up of noncore assets owned by Sponda that Blackstone planned to sell off. The original portfolio included 63 assets, but 17 have been sold over the past four years, raising about €280M. That was used to reduce the original €577M loan, provided by Citibank and Morgan Stanley, to €297M. 

What remains of the portfolio consists of small, secondary assets around the Finnish capital that have very high vacancy. A report from loan servicer Mount Street in November last year said the portfolio was 46% vacant, with an average lease length of 2.5 years.