In April 2011, SES signed a financing agreement with Ex-Im Bank
(Export-Import Bank of the United States) over USD 158 million for the
investment in one geostationary satellite (QuetzSat). At the in-orbit
acceptance date of the satellite, the facility was fully drawn with
USD 152.2 million which will be repaid in 17 equal semi-annual
installments starting on June 22, 2012. The loan has a final maturity
date of June 22, 2020 and bears interest at a fixed rate of 3.11%.
And
On September 30, 2003, the Group issued in the US Private Placement
market four series of unsecured notes amounting to USD 1,000.0
million and GBP 28.0 million. These notes comprised:1) Series A USD 400.0 million of 5.29% Senior Notes due September
2013, amortising as of September 2007. The Private Placement Series A
was repaid on September 30, 2013.2) Series B USD 513.0 million of 5.83% Senior Notes due September
2015, amortising as of September 2011.3) Series C USD 87.0 million of 5.93% Senior Notes due September
2015.4) Series D GBP 28.0 million of 5.63% Senior Notes due September
2013, amortising as of September 2007. The Private Placement Series D
was repaid on September 30, 2013.On these four series, the Group pays interest semi-annually. SES is
committed under the US Private Placement to maintaining covenants
requiring certain financial ratios to be upheld within agreed limits
in order to provide sufficient security to the lenders. Of these, the
covenant which management monitors the most actively is the
requirement to maintain the Net Debt/EBITDA ratio at a level of 3.5 or
below.— Source
What's the use of with here? Can it be substituted here with any other prepositions?
What's the use of on here? Why not for or with?
Best Answer
So (as I think you know) a credit facility is a loan or collection of loans made to a business entity. As near as I can tell, "fully drawn" is used in finance in the senses of definitions 65 and 66 here, as in to call upon the resources of something. So a fully drawn loan is one that's been entirely paid out to the borrower.
So I would read the quoted sentence as though it had the comma in brackets. "With" then means "having"--the loan is fully taken out and has a balance of 152.2 million USD to be repaid under the stated terms. I could see substituting "having," which is both not a preposition and less idiomatic than "with." Otherwise, "with" is the preposition we use to provide supplemental quantitative information: compare the phrases "with an error term of..." or "with estimates exceeding..." I do not believe any other preposition would serve this purpose.
"On" is used here because, as others have stated, that's the idiomatic phrase to refer to payment of interest related to a particular borrowing. I suspect, but can't demonstrate, that this is at least in part because interest is a mathematical context relating to some basis; we frequently use "on" to compare a part to a whole when the basis of the comparison is important. As an example, "An error of 3 cm on a total measurement of 15 m," or the titles of this paper or this paper.
Because the sentence is inverted, I would accept "For" or "With" in this location; however, I would expect the context to be making a distinction between the payment terms of these series vs. terms of other series under discussion. For example, I would find it acceptable to say "For these four series, the Group pays interest semi-annually, while for the majority of its borrowings, interest is paid on a monthly basis". Without that comparative context, "on" is the better choice because of the idiom of paying interest on a loan. I would not in any case accept "*The group pays interest with these four series semi-annually"--the inversion is required for the comparative context to make sense, and "with" or "for" are not idiomatically appropriate for discussing interest.