Ocean Rig amends loans to remove all Dryships cross-default clauses

By Jennifer Chiou

New York, April 4 - Ocean Rig UDW Inc. announced that it has received the required consents from lenders to amend its $800 million senior secured term loan agreement, $990 million senior secured credit facilities and $1.04 billion senior secured credit facility.

Under all of the secured loan facilities, all cross-default or cross-acceleration clauses relating to the debt of Dryships Inc. will be removed.

According to a news release, Ocean Rig will be allowed to pay dividends in an amount up to 50% of its net income, subject to certain conditions being met, under the term loan with Nordea and ABN Amro as well as the $990 million of facilities from Deutsche Bank.

Also under the same facilities, subsidiaries of the company will be allowed to pay dividends to Ocean Rig under certain conditions.

In addition, the cash sweep repayment mechanism under the $990 million facilities will be fully removed. With these amendments, the company said that it will have greater flexibility to distribute cash within the Ocean Rig Group.

Under the $1.04 billion facility with DNB, the cross-acceleration clause relating to Dryships debt will be replaced with a cross-acceleration clause with Ocean Rig, which will be a guarantor under this facility.

And under the other two loans, Dryships will no longer provide a guarantee, which means that the cross-acceleration clause relating to Dryships debt will be removed.

Ocean Rig provides offshore deepwater drilling services and is based in Nicosia, Cyprus. It is a subsidiary of Athens-based DryShips Inc.

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