Bank of America leads the new financing arrangement asadministrative agent. Banc of America Securities LLC is the solelead arranger and book manager on the deal. Commerzbank is thesyndication agent. Wells Fargo and PNC Bank are co-documentationagents. The managing agent is EuroHypo AG. The five otherparticipants in the financing are SouthTrust, Northern Trust,BB&T, Compass Bank and Comerica Bank.

Tom Charlesworth, executive vice president, CFO and chiefinvestment officer for Cousins, calls the consortium "an exceptiongroup of financial institutions." He adds, "With this facility andour other traditional sources of capital, such as non-recoursemortgages, financing ventures and asset sales, we arewell-positioned to finance our future investment activities andother cash needs."

In a separate action, Cousins' directors are giving shareholderstheir regular quarterly cash dividend on the Series A cumulativeRedeemable Preferred Stock. The 48-cent dividend per share, or$1.94 on an annualized basis, is payable Aug. 16 to preferredholders of record on Aug. 2.