The voestalpine Group is responding quickly to the changing market situation. A syndicated loan of EUR 800 million in two tranches has been agreed in order to safeguard medium and long term financing.

In total, voestalpine will be supplied with two tranches of EUR 400 million, each with a maturity of five years, issued by a consortium of eleven banks.

The first tranch will safeguard liquidity needs for investments and repayments during the business year 2012-13.

The second tranch is intended to cushion potential market disturbances in the field of financing and is a purely precautionary measure. Although the transaction was significantly oversubscribed, in the end it was not increased.

Mr Robert Ottel CFO of voestalpine said that "Taking measures to safeguard liquidity represents a further diversification of our recent corporate action."

voestalpine was very successful in placing a corporate bond with a volume of EUR 500 million on the capital market in January 2011.

Foreign banks make up two thirds of the consortium; the remaining third of the banking partners comes from Austria, and is being coordinated by the UniCredit Bank Austria AG and the Credit Agricole Corporate & Investment Bank.