Fox Corp. has unveiled a $1 billion revolving credit agreement completed with a consortium of banks.
In a securities filing on Thursday, Fox said the new debt — a five-year unsecured revolver from a consortium of banks led by Citibank that could potentially go to $1.75 billion — will be used for “general corporate purposes.”
But the announcement of the new debt facility, completed on June 14, also follows Fox settling the high-profile defamation case brought against it by Dominion Voting Systems in April, which put an end to the suit. To pay for the lawsuit settlement, Fox was expected to reduce its own costs by using insurance and tax deductions for business expenses.
Fox said it has yet to borrow any funds under the revolving credit agreement, which will run to June 14, 2028. And the media company in its latest financial results indicated it had $4.14 billion in cash and cash equivalents on its balance sheet as of March 2023.
In addition to Citibank, Deutsche Bank and Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan and Morgan Stanley are part of the lender consortium behind the revolver agreement.
In April, Fox also settled another defamation suit tied to the aftermath of the 2020 election, one filed by a Venezuelan businessman named Majed Khalil, who was the subject of a Dobbs segment that painted him as part of a conspiracy to steal the election for Joe Biden.
Fox, led by executive chairman and CEO Lachlan Murdoch, is also being sued by electronic voting firm Smartmatic USA Corp., which filed its own lawsuit over the fraud claims in February 2021.
