Banks will be less willing to finance leveraged buy-outs as a consequence of a revised deal struck by Bain Capital and Thomas H Lee to buy Clear Channel Communications, bankers and private equity executives said on Wednesday.

Under the new terms, Clear Channel will be bought by its managers and the two private equity firms for $36 a share, or $17.9bn – an 8 per cent discount to the previously agreed price.

The deal came after the private equity firms and Clear Channel, which owns radio stations and outdoor advertising sites, went to court in New York and Texas to press the banks to make good on their commitment to finance the deal.

The amended agreement, revealed late on Tuesday, represents a victory for private equity buyers and a disappointment for shareholders. But its most important consequence could be its effect on the willingness of banks to back future deals, according to bankers and private equity executives at other firms.

“The banks will require a lot more flexibility on price and terms going forward,” said one banker intimately involved in the talks. In particular, banks are likely to insist on more exacting loan terms. At the time of the original Clear Channel deal, in November 2006, the credit markets had yet to suffer the subprime mortgage meltdown, and banks were willing to extend cheap credit with few conditions – enabling them to alter loan terms if conditions worsened.

“Lenders will seek more protections,” said Alan Jones, a managing director at Morgan Stanley with responsibility for private equity. “There will be a return to more rational behaviour.”

For the banks in the Clear Channel deal, recent improvements in the debt markets mean loan losses are not as large as they had feared. In court documents, the banks estimated their loan losses at $2.65bn. Privately, they calculated their losses at $3.3bn. Now, they are considering “writing up” the value of their loans.

The debt-market rally is also likely to increase the probability that the buy-out of Canadian telecom company BCE is completed. That leaves the fate of only one big private equity buy-out, Penn Gaming, uncertain.

With the new agreement, the private equity firms are growing more confident that they can make a decent return on their sliver of equity in the deal. The reduced price means Clear Channel will have $1.75bn less debt. At the same time, its debt burden will be lighter because of the fall in the absolute level of interest rates.