Corporate borrowers' intentions survey: rising requirements
The fifth annual iteration of the KangaNews-Moody’s Investors Service (Moody’s) Corporate Borrowers Intentions Survey shows a small but significant increase in expectations for debt-capital-markets activity in the year ahead. This comes despite respondents taking a more pessimistic view of prevailing credit conditions.
New Zealand's game changers
The biggest issue in the New Zealand debt market has historically been shortage of domestic supply relative to a demand pool that has grown significantly in the KiwiSaver era. In September, BNZ and KangaNews convened their annual New Zealand roundtable with a specific goal in mind: to discuss whether the national infrastructure need, the emergence of bank securitisation and other factors can radically change the supply landscape.
Port of Melbourne drops an anchor in the Australian market
Port of Melbourne priced the Australian market’s largest single-tranche volume for a nonfinancial corporate borrower in 2018 with its A$550 million (US$388.5 million) seven-year debut on 4 October. But establishing a significant investor base in the local market was the issuer’s main goal rather than outright volume, deal sources say.
The BBSW reset
Australia has bucked the global trend to move away from interbank offered rates (IBORs) that the market benchmarks off and on which short- and long-term funding is based. Active trading in bank bills makes the bank-bill swap rate (BBSW) a viable base rate for the long term – especially now the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) has radically overhauled the BBSW calculation methodology as a cooperative effort with market participants.
Pepper extends US dollar offering to I-Prime programme
Pepper Group (Pepper) introduced US dollars to its I-Prime residential mortgage-backed securities (RMBS) programme with its latest transaction, I-Prime 2018-2. The issuer tells KangaNews the move is designed to continue to diversify its investor base, given the scale of its funding need.