Europe Financial Bond: Bank of Ireland's dual-tranche Tier 2

Online behemoth Amazon stayed true to its disruptive nature with a US$16bn seven-part bond issue – the fourth-largest of the year – to help fund its transformative acquisition of Whole Foods Market. The company amassed US$46bn of orders for the deal, which included a US$2.25bn 40-year tenor – and managed to reel in pricing levels as the book expanded, eventually pricing at the tight end of guidance. The 40-year tenor was unusual for a tech company, although not unheard of. Microsoft and Oracle had already sold issues with tenors of 40 years,...

Coming back to the market after several years away was always going to be tricky – even for one of the world’s largest integrated electricity and gas operators. But a concerted marketing approach that spanned more than four years – and re-established a regular funding base in the liquid US markets – ended up paying rich dividends for Italian utility Enel. Enel’s US$5bn three-part trade in May, the company’s first US dollar foray since 2013, was not big by the standards of the US market. But it was a clear standout for its execution and pricing...

France changed the landscape and pushed the boundaries of what was possible in the Green bond market, marrying state budget plans with best-in-class environmentally responsible financing while establishing a blueprint for the asset class. Agence France Tresor’s €7bn 1.75% June 2039 issue offered investors the best of both worlds: the same standards of liquidity and market functionality as a normal OAT, and a rigorous Green bond framework. Although pipped to the post by Poland as the first sovereign to issue a Green bond with its €750m five-year...

The effort made by Morgan Stanley and its joint venture Mitsubishi UFJ Morgan Stanley Securities (MUMSS) to expand the investor base for Global yen bonds paid dividends in 2017, delivering new opportunities for yield-starved Japanese investors and international issuers. Conditions remained tough in the yen market throughout the year, with wide cross-currency basis swaps making it impossible for the highest-rated overseas issuers to take advantage of Japan’s ultra-low interest rates. The Samurai market also struggled to compete with tight credit...

Selling something new is always a challenge, and BPCE’s first offering of senior non-preferred bonds in the yen market was no exception. BPCE in January became the first French bank to introduce SNP bonds to Japan, coming to market only weeks after the Sapin II law created the new asset class. The swift delivery of the ¥142.7bn (US$1.3bn) deal made it look easy, but that belied the hard work behind the scenes. The issuer spent lots of time explaining the purpose, structure and risks of the new-style securities to Japanese investors, including...

While thoughts in a number of quarters were that the sterling bond market would stagnate in the midst of the uncertainty generated by the result of June 2016’s Brexit referendum, nothing could have been further from the truth. Not only did the market display resilience but it also grew in stature. Issuance volume of some £133bn in the awards period was almost 40% higher than the previous year’s, helped in no small part by the involvement of overseas institutions from the buyside and sellside. Barclays proved itself equal to the challenges...

Nationwide Building Society returned with its first sale of Core Capital Deferred Shares since it pioneered the equity-like security in late 2013, introducing an innovative structural feature to sidestep issues posed by investor pre-emption rights. Unlike Additional Tier 1 bonds, which are callable and have fixed coupons, CCDS are truly perpetual, with variable and completely discretionary distributions. This makes the unrated instruments much more akin to equity than debt, even though they are predominantly held by fixed income investors....

As the market said goodbye to three venerable figures in Credit Suisse’s Swiss franc bond franchise, the bank brought together a new team. But the changes didn’t affect the pace or quality of its business. Syndicate veterans Andre Schmid and Jean Marc Favre, as well as originator Danny Gut, all retired in late 2016, leaving a new guard of Damien Aellan, Micha Peier and Alex Schnurrer to step up and complement the talents of Ben Heck, head of investment-grade capital markets and Dominique Kunz, head of debt capital markets. The team kept up...

It is rare for a sub-investment-grade issuer with a default still fresh in people’s minds to bring a deal to the notoriously conservative Swiss market. But Argentina managed just that in March. Although it was not all plain sailing, the country achieved a feat that some had thought impossible at any price. The deal marked the sovereign’s return to the Swiss market after a near two-decade absence. It had previously issued in December 1998, three years before the country’s last debt default. It followed a roadshow that had the “who’s who of the...

South-South trades are still rare in the bond markets and are mostly undertaken by development banks like CAF issuing in markets such as Hong Kong. So a US$750m 30-year bond by Mexican utility Comision Federal de Electricidad in June was a landmark transaction. It was the first Formosa issuance by a Latin American corporate and the first by any Mexican borrower as the state-owned company sought to diversify its investor base. CFE (BBB+/BBB+) was also the first issuer in the Formosa market to take advantage of a relaxation of capital...

In 2017, it has seemed like nothing could rock the corporate credit party. Despite a volatile year when earthquakes and hurricanes caused massive devastation, the nuclear threat from North Korea, and a dysfunctional administration in Washington, it almost seemed at times that the higher the risks, the tighter the spreads in the US investment-grade market. Of course, there were plenty of drivers that helped the bull run. The lack of foreign inflation, coupled with moderate US inflation, spurred massive demand for US high-grade credit products ...