News
Retail market users have responded positively to the launch of a new ratings agency, Australia Ratings, which is the first to secure a licence to offer its credit ratings to retail investors. But the start-up firm faces both short- and long-term challenges in establishing a franchise, even though none of the existing agencies have elected to seek retail licences in Australia.
Tasmanian Public Finance Corporation (Tascorp) (AA+/Aaa) has launched a June 2014 deal with a targeted size of A$500 million (US$440.8 million). This transaction is the issuer's first since Tascorp released its significantly increased budget for the 2010/11 financial year, and it is the second deal the issuer has brought to the market via bookbuild process.
Natural gas infrastructure provider APA Group (APA) (BBB/Baa2) launched its first domestic bond issue on July 14, announcing that it will place a minimum of A$200 million (US$176.7 million) of 10-year notes at an indicative margin of 240 basis points over semi-quarterly swap. The deal's issuer will be APA's common funding vehicle, APT Pipelines.
TD Securities and UBS Investment Bank have been mandated to launch an increase to KfW Bankengruppe (KfW)'s 5.25 per cent December 2019 Kangaroo bond. The increase will be for a minimum of A$250 million (US$220 million), taking the total issue size to A$1.9 billion minimum. Pricing is expected to occur on Thursday July 15.
Australian securitisation activity is continuing, with Capital Finance Australia launching an expected A$598 million (US$524.1 million) equivalent auto asset-backed securities (ABS) deal across six tranches. Bella Trust Series 2010-1 is the issuer's second visit to the asset-backed markets, having debuted in November last year with a A$866.7 million auto transaction.
Three recent asset-backed securities (ABS) transactions – two priced and a further launched – have highlighted progress in the sector, but market participants say demand for securitised assets is little different to the quiet vanilla market. Bendigo and Adelaide Bank (BEN) doubled the size of its July 8 residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) deal while two other borrowers are re-opening the door to foreign currency issuance from Australian names.
National Australia Bank (NAB) and Westpac Institutional Bank (Westpac) have expanded their global syndicate teams with a new hire in London for NAB and New York for Westpac. Meanwhile, ANZ New Zealand will also have a syndicate banker for the first time, starting in August, and the DCM function at ANZ in Sydney has been bolstered with a new head of bond origination. ANZ also has a new global head of loan syndications, based in Hong Kong.
The A$800 million (US$672.24 million) self-led deal priced on June 28 propelled Westpac Institutional Bank (Westpac) to the top of KangaNews's first half lead-manager league tables for all Australian dollar vanilla bond issuance. Westpac led A$9.49 billion of bond transactions in the first six months of the year; when self-led deals are excluded, ANZ's A$6.9 billion takes top spot.
The tentative deal flow which commenced the week before continued in Australia in the five days to July 2, but sources on all side of the market say demand continues to be patchy and lacking in robustness. While there are hopes that the end of the financial year on June 30 played a significant role in suppressing appetite, investors are not reporting a strong desire for credit at this stage.