Suez Successfully Places Hybrid Bonds For A Total Amount Of €600M In Connection With The Financing Of GE Water Acquisition

Following the announcement on March 8th of the project to acquire GE Water & Process Technologies together with Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec (CDPQ), SUEZ announced recently it has successfully priced an offering of undated deeply subordinated hybrid bond for an amount of €600M.

After the senior unsecured notes issued on April 3rd for a total amount of €1.2B, this hybrid transaction constitutes the second step in refinancing the acquisition. With this hybrid issuance, the Group is also optimizing its balance sheet structure. The Issuer may, at its option, redeem all of the Notes in the event of the non‐completion of the acquisition.

The new hybrid bonds, accounted for as 100% equity under IFRS standards and as 50% equity by the rating agency Moody’s, have an initial fixed coupon of 2.875%, which will be revised for the first time seven years after issuance on the basis of the 5‐year swap rate, and then, every five years.

The settlement of the offering is expected to occur on April 19th

The hybrid bonds are expected to be rated Baa2 with stable outlook by Moody’s in line with outstanding hybrid bonds issued by SUEZ in 2014 and 2015

Following approval by the Autorité des Marchés Financiers (AMF), the prospectus of the new issue will be available on the Group’s website (www.suez.com) and on the AMF website (www.amf‐france.org).

About SUEZ
We are at the dawn of the resource revolution. In a world facing high demographic growth, runaway urbanisation and the shortage of natural resources,securing, optimising and renewing resources is essential to our future. SUEZ (Paris: SEV, Brussels: SEVB)supplies drinking water to 92 million people, delivers wastewater treatment services to 65 million, recovers 16 million tons of waste each year and produces 7 TWh of local and renewable energy. With 82,536 employees, SUEZ, which is present on all five continents, is a key player in the sustainable management of resources. SUEZ generated total revenues of €15.3B in 2016.