News
Newcastle Permanent Building Society (NPBS) (BBB/A3) launched an Australian dollar denominated five-year floating-rate note (FRN) on 3 February. Indicative price guidance for the benchmark deal is 105 basis points area over three-month bank bills and pricing is expected on the day of launch. ANZ and Westpac Institutional Bank are leading.
The Reserve Bank of Australia met market expectations in its first statement on monetary policy of 2022, confirming the imminent end of bond purchases and taking a markedly more positive tone on the economic outlook. But analysts interpret the lack of a move to a more aggressive rate hiking cycle as a more dovish tone than the reserve bank could have taken, pushing back higher rate expectations to the second half of the year.