Page 26 - bne IntelliNews 26th May

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May 26, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 26
bne:Credit
Hungarian rate setter hints benchmark could stay unchanged to 2019 or beyond
Turkey’s Vakifbank mandates lenders to tap foreign markets with USD-denominated bonds
Ukraine’s finance ministry restructures NBU bonds
Hungary’s record low benchmark interest rate could be kept intact until 2019, or possibly even beyond, the Magyar Nemzeti Bank’s Deputy Governor Marton Nagy said in comments published on May 24.
Nagy spoke to Reuters shortly after the monetary policy council left the key rate unchanged at 0.9% its latest meeting. The rate setters signaled the continuation of dovish monetary policy in its post- meeting statements.
Turkey’s state-owned lender Vakifbank has mandated Commerz- bank, Erste Group Bank AG, Goldman Sachs International, HSBC Bank PLC, J.P. Morgan and Natixis to issue USD-denominated Eurobonds, Vakifbank said on May 23 in a stock exchange filing.
In October 2016, Vakifbank completed a five-year $500mn dollar- denominated Eurobond issue. The final yield was 5.614%.
In February 2017, Fitch Ratings downgraded Vakifbank’s long-term foreign currency issuer default ratings (FC IDRs) to ‘BB+’ from ‘BBB-’ in parallel with a sovereign rating downgrade to junk.
The Ukrainian government has agreed with the National Bank of Ukraine (NBU) to restructure a UAH229bn (€7.7bn) worth of state bonds held by the regulator, the finance ministry in Kyiv reported on May 24.
The new bonds will replace existing bonds in the NBU portfolio,
or part of a total UAH378bn held by the NBU. The new bonds will mature in 2025-2047, and will have a coupon rate linked to inflation in Ukraine, according to the ministry.
“The only tangible effect of such a debt restructuring is the UAH- 10bn savings of budget costs on interest payments in 2017,” Alexan- der Paraschiy, an analyst at the Concorde Capital brokerage in Kyiv, wrote in a research note.