Pro Forma Basis Credit Agreement

This article focuses on current market practice with respect to the important provisions of Covenant-lite agreements with a revolving credit facility and the sometimes delicate interaction between the rights of revolving lenders in these transactions, who enjoy the direct benefit of financial protection from maintenance, and Term Lenders who do not. It should be borne in mind that the guarantee of credits in favour of revolving lenders is a measure taken by a group of lenders (i.e. revolving lenders) without the same advantage being extended to maturity lenders. The liquidity issued to guarantee the flow-through bonds is held and applied for the performance of the specific accreditation obligations for which the cash guarantees have been made available before any other use of that liquidity to fulfil other obligations arising from the credit agreement. A revolving loan buffer can also be negotiated on a case-by-case basis, although such a buffer is clearly not as widespread as a flow-through cushion. Sometimes a buffer can be used for both flow-through and revolving loans (in this case, the agreement comes to life when the total amount of loans issued and outstanding revolving loans exceeds the buffer), so a borrower can draw a few revolving loans without triggering the applicability of the agreement if the amount of outstanding credits is less than the buffer. In a typical covenant-lite credit agreement with a revolver, the Financial Covenant is only checked on a maintenance basis at the end of a quarter of activity if, on that date, revolving credits are pending or if credits have been issued, beyond a possible applicable buffer.