RLPC-Germany's Merck signs 1 bln euro loan

LONDON, April 22 (Reuters) - German chemicals group Merck KGaA (MRCG.DE) has signed a loan of slightly over 1 billion euros to help finance its acquisition of Millipore (MIL.N) last month, the lead banks said in a statement on Thursday.

The originally planned 4.2 billion euro ($5.65 billion) syndicated loan was substantially reduced after Merck issued 3.2 billion euros of bonds.

The bonds were used for the repayment of 2.2 billion euros of one-year and two-year loan facilities and just under half of the remaining 2 billion euro three-year financing, banking sources said.

The financing was put in place by lead banks BNP Paribas, Commerzbank and Bank of America Merrill Lynch and paid margins ranging from 125 bps and 165 bps over EURIBOR depending on maturity, the banking sources added.

Banks were invited to commit 75 million euros for a fee of 60 bps payable in two instalments, one at accession and the last at funding.

Syndication was highly successful and achieved a 100 percent hit rate from Merck's existing bank group with all banks' commitments scaled back. (Reporting by Alasdair Reilly, editing by Will Waterman)