UPDATE 2-Daimler says has "extremely comfortable" liquidity
(Adds loan details, comments, background, share price)
FRANKFURT, Oct 7 (Reuters) - German carmaker Daimler AG (DAIGn.DE) played down on Tuesday any immediate impact from the credit crisis and said it had an "extremely comfortable" cash pile.
A spokeswoman said even a "solidly financed" company like Daimler could be affected by market volatility.
But she added: "Daimler is currently in an extremely comfortable cash position of gross liquidity in the amount of 10 billion euros ($13.6 billion) at the end of September and therefore does not need to participate in the fierce refinancing market.
"Only approximately 1.5 billion euros will have to be refinanced in the fourth quarter of 2008."
Daimler reported group gross liquidity of 7.1 billion euros at the end of June.
Daimler said it was placed to ride out the storm on financial markets because of its diversified sources of funding and its active risk management that limited its exposure to individual banks.
Daimler recently put a new three billion euro loan in place to support its commercial paper (CP) programme. The loan is undrawn but will act as an alternative source of short-term funding in case of CP market disruption, banking sources said.
The loan was arranged by Deutsche Bank, JP Morgan, Royal Bank of Scotland and UniCredit in the summer. It closed oversubscribed before Lehman's bankruptcy filing in mid-September stalled the loan market and is currently in documentation, bankers said.
Daimler shares closed up 0.74 percent at 27.40 euros by 0909 GMT while the DJ Stoxx European car sector index .SXAP closed down 0.88 percent. (Reporting by Michael Shields; Additional reporting by Alasdair Reilly, Editing by Greg Mahlich, Paul Bolding) (michael.shields@thomsonreuters.com, Reuters Messaging: michael.shields.reuters.com@reuters.net; +49 69 7565 1266)) ($1=.7358 Euro)
