THE BAA airports group is trying to ease its cash problems by raising a £1 billion loan against its regional airports.

It is understood to have appointed Macquarie, the Australian bank, to advise on the fundraising. The £1 billion deal would involve BAA’s airports outside London - Southampton, Glas-gow, Edinburgh and Aberdeen.

BAA was taken off the stock market last year by Ferrovial, the Spanish infra-structure group. It led a consortium of investors that paid £10.3 billion for the group, which also owns Heathrow, Gatwick and Stansted, the capital’s main airports.

The consortium had planned to refinance the £8 billion in loans raised for the purchase last year, but was caught out by a regulatory review of airport pricing and the credit crunch.

Some analysts believe hefty interest bills and big investment plans mean BAA could run out of cash halfway through next year.

The main part of the planned refinancing would have been a bond issue backed by the revenues from the three London bases, with a separate loan for the four regional airports. Although the credit crunch has halted the bond issue, BAA is now thought to be pushing ahead with the regional deal. The company declined to comment.

Details of the loan talks were revealed by Project Finance International, the influential financial magazine. It said the money raised would be used to ease the company’s finances, and to help raise the market rating of its senior debt to investment grade. If BAA was able to do this, the magazine said, it would avoid a hike in interest rates on its outstanding loans in April.

The Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) will release its final determination on BAA’s prices for the next five years early next month.

Analysts expect BAA then to attempt the main refinancing, and do not rule out a sale of one or more of its UK airports to raise cash.

“We increasingly believe BAA could be effectively forced into some type of a refinancing soon due to the weakness of the existing financial structure,” said the investment bank JP Morgan. “If BAA could choose to wait until the credit market recovered, we believe it would, but in short it may no longer have that option and is likely to have to act sooner.”

The CAA has come under trenchant criticism from airlines over its policing of BAA. “It is unacceptable that airport users and their passengers will continue to pay for the market failings of monopoly provision of airports services and the costs of a failed regulator,” said Virgin Atlantic.

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