MANILA |
Wed Jan 4, 2012 7:36pm EST
MANILA Jan 5 (Reuters) – The Philippines said on
Thursday it raised $1.5 billion from the sale of 2037 global
bonds in an offering that was about eight times oversubscribed,
underscoring investors’ appetite for emerging market assets.
The 25-year bonds were priced at par to yield 5 percent, or
an equivalent of 196.2 basis points over benchmark U.S.
Treasuries, the government said in a statement.
The guidance for the bonds was initially at 5.25 percent but
was later lowered to 5.0 to 5.1 percent.
“We are very pleased to have once again been able to extend
the Republic’s maturity profile while at the same time achieving
the lowest yield for a new 25-year benchmark US$ global offering
by the Philippines,” Finance Secretary Cesar Purisima said in
the statement.
With the bond sale, the government has raised two-thirds of
its total 2012 foreign debt requirement of $2.25 billion.
The offer attracted orders of $12.5 billion, Rosalia de
Leon, head of the Finance department’s international finance
group, told Reuters in a phone interview.
Manila has authority to sell only up to $1.5 billion of the
bonds.
The Philippines became Asia’s first issuer of
foreign-currency sovereign bonds, returning to the debt markets
early in the new year to take advantage of investors’ improved
risk appetite after global markets began 2012 with gains.
Bookbuilding took about 15 hours, the government said.
Broken down into geographical share, investors from the
Philippines took up a quarter of the bonds sold. Those from the
rest of Asia gobbled up a quarter, the United States accounted
for over a third and Europe, 15 percent.
Deutsche Bank AG, Citigroup Inc, Credit
Suisse Group AG, Goldman Sachs Group Inc, HSBC
, JP Morgan Chase, Standard Chartered Plc
and UBS AG were joint bookrunners.
(Reporting by Rosemarie Francisco; Editing by Ed Lane)
