RICHARDSON, Texas-Ericsson Inc. said it sold to Citibank its $132 million vendor financing loan facility with Omnipoint Communications Inc.
Ericsson is one of two suppliers of Global System for Mobile communications equipment to Omnipoint, which operates personal communications services in the New York metropolitan area and in Philadelphia.
Equipment vendors have provided substantial loans to some PCS operators. Northern Telecom Inc. last December syndicated about $1.1 billion of its $1.3 billion vendor credit facility with Sprint Spectrum L.P. through a group of major financial institutions. About $600 million of the syndicated financing was committed by the financial institutions for their affiliates. The $200 million of the remaining loans was assigned to a supplier under an existing commitment to provide related financing to Nortel.
