Glencore refinancing £6bn credit facility

Glencore was shoring up access to its future cash requirements on Wednesday, announcing it had signed a new revolving credit facility of a similar scope to its current one.

The new facility would ultimately refinance and replace the FTSE 100 comapany's existing $8.45bn (£5.92bn) facility, which was expiring in May.

Glencore's board said it had received commitments already from its senior banks for $8.4bn, representing an increase from 37 banks of close to $3bn above existing levels.

"Reflecting the high oversubscription level, Glencore has currently scaled back and signed in $7.7bn of such commitments and will now broaden the refinancing via launch of general syndication to some 30 additional banks in Q2 2016," the board said in a statement.

Glencore said the new facility remained unsecured, as with the current facility, and contained a 12-month extension option and a 12-month borrower's term-out option, extending its final maturity to May 2018.

The board confirmed there were no financial covenants in the facility documentation, and confirmed the active bookrunners on the deal were ABN AMRO, Bank of Tokyo Mitsubishi, HSBC, ING and Santander.