BAA says it has made ‘significant progress’ towards refinancing its debt. The airport operator has arranged a loan of £626m from a group of eight major international banks to help with the £1.57 billion debt. 

In a statement it says it intends to prepay up to £1.1bn of the debt in September. This will be from a combination of proceeds from the new loan, drawings of up to £375m from its revolving credit facilities and proceeds from the sale of its stake in the airport property partnership APP in June.

The loan has a margin of 3.25% for the first three years, rising to 3.75% in the final year.

It intends to refinance the remainder of the subordinated facility through non-core asset disposals, bank and/or institutional loans and capital markets issuance.