January 18 (SeeNews) - Slovenia said it has successfully placed a new 1 billion euro ($1.1 billion) 10-year bond issue and reopened by 300 million euro its 30-year benchmark, due in August 2045, to bring the new outstanding issue to 1 billion euro benchmark size.
"Both transactions priced in very good terms taking advantage of a strong reopening of the euro primary market in 2017," the finance ministry said in a statement late on Tuesday.
The mandate was announced to the market late on Monday with the aim to execute the transaction intraday on Tuesday, as Barclays, Credit Agricole CIB, HSBC and UniCredit have been selected as lead managers.
"On the back of positive feedback received after the announcement, initial pricing thoughts of MS+ ‘high 60s’ for the new long 10Y issue and MS+’120bps area’ for the reopening were released at 09:50 CET on Tuesday morning," the finance ministry also said. "Momentum was strong from the outset with indications of Interest exceeding 1.6 billion euro (including 295m JLM interest) on the 10-year and 700m euro (including 130m JLM interest) on the 2045 reopening after just a couple of hours of marketing."
The positive momentum continued throughout lunch time to reach a very strong consolidated orderbook in excess of 2.45 billion euro with participation from over 197 accounts from a granular array of institutional investors and diversified geographies, it added.
"At 13:30 CET the decision was taken to set tighter spreads at MS+63bps on the new 2027 and MS+112bps on the 2045 reopening with the target to close books at 13:45 CET. Investors showed little price sensitivity enabling to close books in excess of 1.75bn euro (including 295m JLM interest) on the 10Y and 700m euro (including 145m JLM interest) on the 2045 tap and set respective sizes at 1bn euro for the new issue and 300mn euro for the 2045 reopening," the ministry also said.
The transaction priced later in the afternoon at 17:10 CET with an annual coupon level of 1.25% for the new ten-year bond and reoffer yield of 2.428% for the 2045 reopening.
($=0.9353 euro)