The Blackstone Group controlled SeaWorld Entertainment Inc is now seeking a US$1.4 billion term loan in order to refinance its debts. This comes after the theme park operator went public just last month.

Arranging the loan transaction for SeaWorld is Bank of America Corp with an interest of 2.5 percentage points above the London interbank offered rate (LIBOR) together with a 0.75% minimum for the lending benchmark. The transaction was confirmed by an anonymous source familiar with the matter.

SeaWorld is renowned for Shamu the killer whale. It is offering the loan to lending institutions at 99.75 cents to 100 cents on the dollar with six months of soft call protection. This means the debtor, in this case SeaWorld, would be paying up 1% premium to reprice the loan for its first year.

The debt will become demandable by 2020, with a term loan A maturing at 2016 and term loan B expiring at 2017. A term loan B is sold to non banking lenders through collateralized loan obligations, bank loan mutual funds and hedge funds while term loan A would be sold to financial institutions.