The Saudi BinLaden Group is seeking an advisor to help the troubled company restructure as much as $20-$30 billion in debt, according to a new report in Reuters.
The once-dominant construction company in the Kingdom that has fallen on hard times is now looking for a comeback.
In late 2017, the Saudi government, through a Finance-ministry controlled company, took a 36.22% stake in SBG, from Bin Laden family members that were swept up in an anti-graft campaign that Riyadh launched in late 2017, Reuters reports. Doing so drastically reduced the influence of Bin Laden family members in the company.
Finance Minister Mohammed al-Jadaan told Reuters in December that SBG would soon have a “normal board” with family members and representatives of government ownership after a five-member committee restructured its governance.
Only two Bin Laden brothers, Saad and Abdullah, are now represented on the new nine-person board.
But, as Reuters reports, SBG may have difficulty securing debt refinancing help. Creditors had been expecting the finance ministry to revive Binladin with government loans, and Saudi banks may have a weak appetite for the undertaking after several multi-billion-dollar corporate debt restructurings in recent years.
In September last year, Reuters spoke to “more than two dozen Saudi Binladin Group employees, family friends, government officials, bankers and businessmen to tell the story of the fall of the Bin Ladens” in a longform piece for the news service.
[Click here to read the full report in Reuters]
