News
Westpac New Zealand (Westpac) (AA-/Aa3/AA-) reopened the New Zealand domestic market on July 9, ending a month-long hiatus in new public issuance. With final interest topping NZ$500 million, Westpac was able to upsize the three-year floating rate note (FRN) to a final NZ$385 million (US$300.4 million) from an initial NZ$200 million minimum size.
Preliminary ratings have been assigned to a new asset-backed securities (ABS) issue from CNH Capital. The transaction, CNH Capital Australia Receivables Trust Series 2013-1, is backed by a pool of agricultural and construction equipment loans and has indicative volume of A$400 million (US$367.1 million) across its five tranches.
ANZ Banking Group (ANZ) set the margin on its new tier one transaction in the domestic retail market on July 9, at the same time disclosing that bookbuild volume was increased to A$1 billion (US$917.9 million) from an indicative A$750 million. The deal, ANZ Capital Notes, is ANZ's first retail transaction since it placed A$1.5 billion of lower tier two notes in March last year and its first tier one issue since the sale of A$1.3 billion, also in Australian retail format, in September 2011.
A gap of over a month since the last domestic deal in New Zealand ended following the July 9 pricing of a three-year floating-rate note (FRN) offer by Westpac New Zealand (Westpac) (AA-/Aa3/AA-). The self-led transaction was upsized to NZ$385 million (US$300.4 million) from minimum volume of NZ$200 million at launch a day earlier.
Deal activity in Australia and New Zealand remains at a standstill for the close of the first week in July. In the ratings world, new issuance criteria put in place by Standard & Poor's saw rating and outlook affirmation for a sweep of small and mid-sized health, life and non-life insurers.
Westpac Institutional Bank (Westpac) closed the first half of 2013 at the top of KangaNews's intermediary league tables for all Australian dollar vanilla bond issuance, which include credit, all Kangaroo, and syndicated sovereign and semi-government issuance. The bank's performance is not reliant on self-led volume: Westpac remains top of the table even when self-led deals are excluded.
KangaNews is proud to reveal the results of its 2013 Fixed Income Research Poll, in which Australian institutional investors were asked to vote for the best research providers across a range of sectors relevant to their market. This year's top performers have almost all turned in consistently strong results since the poll was introduced in 2011, but there is also a notable success for a resurgent investment bank.
Bank analysts largely expected the Reserve Bank of Australia (RBA)'s July 2 decision to leave the Australian cash rate on hold at 2.75 per cent, in part because recent falls in the value of the Australian dollar have assisted the RBA's goal of rebalancing the economy away from the resources sector. Some economists see a less dovish tone to recent RBA statements but the consensus remains an expectation of further easing this year.
The first half of calendar 2013 produced largely unspectacular issuance volumes across Australasian credit markets, as the virtual halt to primary activity in June compounded what had already been a moderate year in many sectors. According to KangaNews data, only the Australian corporate and asset-backed markets and New Zealand's Kauri product showed sufficiently robust issuance to register strong volumes across the half year.
Deal flow remained at a standstill for the final week in June with no activity on either side of the Tasman Sea; the full month saw no public bond trades in the domestic or Kangaroo markets for the first time since August 2011 and December 2011 respectively. In the ratings world, the most signficiant activity this week was S&P's downgrade of Tabcorp on June 25.