Financiera Independencia in $200 Million High-Yield Notes Offering

Cleary Gottlieb represented Financiera Independencia in a Rule 144A/Regulation S offering of $200 million aggregate principal amount of 10.0% senior guaranteed notes due March 2015. The transaction closed on March 30.

Financiera Independencia is a leading Mexican microfinance company that provides microcredit loans to individuals in the low-income segment of the Mexican population. The company is publicly listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange. Recently, the company acquired Financiera Finsol, the second-largest group lending microfinance institution in Mexico, through an investment by Eton Park. Financiera Independencia also recently announced that it intends to convert itself into a bank.

This transaction was particularly noteworthy because financial institutions are not typical issuers of high-yield bonds, and the standard high-yield covenant package had to be modified to fit Financiera Independencia’s current business model as well as its expected conversion into a bank.

Bank of America Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley acted as joint book-running managers in this high yield notes offering.

This is the second transaction that Cleary Gottlieb has worked on involving Financiera Independencia. The firm represented the underwriters in the company’s initial public offering in 2007.