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Weekly Lists
September 8, 2017 www.intellinews.com I Page 27
bne:Credit Ukraine to issue its
first post-Maidan Eurobond this autumn
Ukraine will issue its first post-Maidan Eurobond this autumn in what is widely seen as a test of investors’ appetite for debt issuances by the war torn country.
The government has mandated JP Morgan, BNP Paribas and Goldman Sachs as bookrunners on the deal, according to people familiar with the situation, reports the Financial Times.
The bond will be the first since the $3bn Eurobond issued in 2013 in a deal with Russia as part of a $15bn loan programme that Kyiv has since defaulted on. However, analysts worry that raising money on the international capital markets will weaken the influence Ukraine’s chief donor, the International Monetary Fund (IMF),
has over the government.
Foreign investors now account for a striking 46% of Czech government debt, meaning the Czech Republic is the most popular destination for emerging market bonds among foreigners, Deutsche Bank said on September 4. The figure is 14 percentage points up in the year to date.
On September 1, Fitch Ratings upgraded its outlook on the government’s debt rating of A- to positive from stable after the Czech Statistical Office revised the country's second-quarter GDP growth figure up from 4.5% to 4.7%. Even the initial figure blew forecasters’ projections out of the water, with analysts originally expecting somewhere around 2.9% growth.
Chief economist Pavel Sobisek of UniCredit attributed the record performance to higher household spending resulting from a nine- year record rise in wages.
Azerbaijan's new dollar bonds, issued as part of the restructuring of the foreign obligations of the International Bank of Azerbaijan (IBA), began trading on September 1, according to Reuters.
State-owned IBA, the largest lender in the country, defaulted
on $3.3bn worth of foreign obligations in May, prompting a debt restructuring process that saw its obligations swapped for dollar bonds issued by IBA and the Azerbaijani government. IBA issued a $1bn Eurobond due in 2024 with a 3.5% coupon; meanwhile, the Azerbaijani finance ministry has approved seven of its own bonds totalling $2.2bn with maturities ranging from December 2017 to September 2032.
Economic buoyancy drives Czech debt to top spot among EM bond investors
Azerbaijani IBA, finance ministry issue $3.3bn in dollar Eurobonds for debt restructuring