Abertis Bidders Said to Fail to Get Loan Financing by Deadline

Bidders for Abertis Infraestructuras SA failed to get enough lenders to commit 6.3 billion euros ($8.2 billion) of loans backing their offer for Spain’s biggest highway operator by today’s deadline, according to three people familiar with the financing.

CVC Capital Partners Ltd. and Abertis’s two main shareholders, Criteria CaixaCorp SA and Actividades de Construccion y Servicios SA, received verbal commitments for about 4 billion euros, less than the amount needed to support a bid, said the people, who declined to be identified because the talks are private. An acquisition of Abertis is now unlikely to proceed until at least September, a fourth person said.

The bidders had asked lenders to support the financing by July 16, before extending the deadline to today when they weren’t able to get enough banks to commit.

CVC and its partners are seeking 5.3 billion euros of term loans and a 1 billion-euro revolving credit, one of people said. Money in a revolving credit can be borrowed again once it’s been repaid; in a term loan it can’t.

David Sturken, a London-based spokesman for the consortium of bidders, declined to comment. Toni Brunet, a spokesman for Barcelona-based Abertis, also declined to comment.

To contact the reporters on this story: Karen Eeuwens in London keeuwens@bloomberg.net. Kate Haywood in London khaywood@bloomberg.net.

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