31 May 2006 - Gide Loyrette Nouel, legal counsel for the first securitisation transaction in Tunisia:

This transaction, worth the equivalent of 30,000,000 euros in Tunisian dinars, involved the transfer by Banque Internationale Arabe de Tunisie (BIAT) to a mutual debt fund (fonds commun de créances) called FCC BIAT-CREDIMMO 1 of receivables resulting from loans granted to private individuals for the building and renovation of their homes. The transaction was arranged by Maghreb Titrisation. The fund was set up for the purposes of this transaction by Tunisie Titrisation (in its capacity as management company) and BIAT (in its capacity as depository) in accordance with Act No. 2001-83 of 24 July 2001 promulgating the Tunisian Mutual Fund Organisations Code (Code des Organismes de Placement Collectif).

The fund financed the purchase of the receivables by issuing four categories of units:

36,000,000 dinars worth of P1 senior units (provisional maturity: January 2012);
10,000,000 dinars worth of P2 senior units (provisional maturity: October 2016);
   2,500,000 dinars worth of subordinated units (provisional maturity: October 2016); and
 a residual unit subscribed for by BIAT.

Given the quality of the portfolio of receivables selected by BIAT for this first transaction, the units issued have been given a good rating by Moody’s (Aaa.tn for the senior units and A3.tn for the subordinated units). This rating has made it possible to optimise the financial conditions of the issue of the units.

The members of the Gide Loyrette Nouel legal team working on this transaction were Kamel Ben Salah and Amina Larbi-Ezzine in Tunis, and Xavier de Kergommeaux and Grégory Benteux in Paris.