Heidelberg CFO wants to lower interest expenses – report

Heidelberg CFO wants to lower interest expenses – report
12 April 2010


HeidelbergCement AG is confident it will be able to lower its interest expenses as the producer negotiates with its creditor banks on better refinancing conditions, the company’s chief financial officer tells German daily Boersen-Zeitung.

"We are in preliminary talks and are quite confident that we have a good negotiation position," Lorenz Naeger says in an interview published in Saturday’s Boersen-Zeitung. He adds the company wants to lower the number of banks in its consortium.

Naeger says there is no pressure on the company at the moment as HeidelbergCement has repaid some EUR7 billion during the past 18 months. "This amount for sure exceeded the expectations held by the banks last year," he says.

Naeger says HeidelbergCement aims to keep the U.S. concrete pipe business, while its building products operations in the US, Canada and the UK are still up for sale.

"We’re in a difficult market dominated by the demands of buyers," Naeger says. "We will wait for the situation to improve. And then we will examine the situation again," he says, adding that previous talks to sell these operations broke down and haven’t been restarted since.
Published under Cement News