Emirates NBD starts taking orders for Kangaroo bonds

REUTERS/Ghazal Watfa

Emirates NBD, Dubai’s biggest lender, has begun taking orders for a benchmark issue of bonds denominated in Australian dollars, a document on the sale showed.

The lender began marketing the 10-year Kangaroo bonds at around 200 basis points over asset swap (ASW), with an indicative yield of 6.3 percent and an indicative coupon of 6.25 percent.

ANZ, Emirates NBD Capital, JPMorgan and Nomura are lead managers for the debt sale “expected to launch in the near future, subject to market conditions”, the document seen by Reuters said.

The bonds will be issued under Emirates NBD’s 4 billion Australian dollars ($2.77 billion) Kangaroo debt issuance programme. They are expected to be rated A2 by Moody’s and A+ by Fitch.  

Kangaroo bonds are issued by non-Australian issuers in the Australian market and are denominated in Australian dollars.

Earlier this month, Reuters reported that Dubai Islamic Bank, the biggest Islamic lender in the UAE, was set to raise $1 billion from a sale of five-year long sustainable sukuk.

Moreover, a roaring start to the year for debt issuance has helped lift sovereign emerging market bond sales to a record $44 billion peak in January with investors keen to deploy piles of cash, according to data compiled by Morgan Stanley.

So far investment-grade-rated Saudi Arabia is the largest borrower, having sold $10 billion of dollar bonds this year.

Nearly $40 billion of debt sales came in the first half of the month when Hong Kong, Israel and Mexico all raced to issue debt early, with Colombia and Serbia soon following suit.