Rusal optimistic about foreign debt restructuring

United Company Rusal, the world’s top aluminium producer, has said international banks have agreed to restructure half its $7.3-billion debt. Rusal, controlled by businessman Oleg Deripaska, said in September that it had won another extension for restructuring its debt repayment to foreign and Russian banks.

Investors and bankers are eagerly watching  the outcome of talks in Russia’s largest ever restructuring deal, seen as key for the fortunes of Deripaska, once Russia’s richest man and now the country’s most indebted tycoon. “Currently, international banks have received the endorsement (of their credit committees) to restructure 50 percent of the debt,” Oleg Mukhamedshin, Rusal’s director for capital markets, said. Rusal has already reached agreements on debt restructuring with Russian banks, which it then presented to foreign banks.

UC Rusal’s total debt, including that owed to Russian banks, is $16.8 billion.