insto - Australian financial markets

Last Thursday, CBA launched its first EUR transaction in 2010 - EUR1bn 4.375pct 10yr senior unsecured EMTN. The deal was also the first 10-year EUR senior trade by a financial institution in 2010.
Pricing:
• With a well oversubscribed orderbook of EUR2.4bn, the transaction was reoffered at Mid-Swap +98bpts, which is at the tight end of whisper guidance of Mid-Swap +105bpts.
• Despite the 7bpts tightening, the orderbook remained sticky losing only EUR100m of orders.
• In the secondary market the bonds tightened a further 4 bpts.
Distribution:
• 152 investors participated.

CBA has completed a US$250 million senior floating rate note private placement in the US market under MTN &144a.

Sonic Healthcare has priced US$250 milliom of notes in the US private placement market. Close of the transaction is expected in mid January 2010.

Proceeds of the note offer will be used to repay existing bank debt, and the notes will lengthen Sonic's debt maturity profile.

Former UBS fixed income head joins CommBank: CBA has appointed Simon Maidment, former UBS head of fixed income, as head of group funding and execution, financial services, based in Sydney. Maidment, who is to commence his role in early February, will report directly to Lyn Cobley, group treasurer. He worked for UBS for 17 years, and resigned in 2008 from heading up the bank's fixed income operations. He was replaced at UBS by Grant Lovett.

The global banking industry has recovered half of the market cap lost since the pre-crisis peak of $US9.7 trillion in October 07, reports the Boston Consulting Group. Market cap has doubled in the past seven months from a low of $US3.1 trillion in February 2009 to $US6.2 trillion at the end of September 2009.

While many companies are reluctant to admit their potential greenhouse gas costs, the number of institutional investors seeking this information has spiked, repots Bernard Kellerman.

The Carbon Disclosure Project has evolved as the pre-eminent mechanism for communication between companies and investors on climate change and carbon exposure issues. It has been run globally for 7 years, but for the fourth year has been expanded to cover the top 200 Australian and top 50 New Zealand companies.

The deep freeze that descended on financial markets across the most advanced economies one year ago did not spare the M&A world. However there are definite signs of life re-appearing, reports Catherine Raisig*

For a while there it really did look as if mergers and acquisitions teams worldwide had been dealt a lethal blow. With the collapse of US financial services provider Lehman Brothers just over a year ago, M&A activity slumped the world over and the involvement of private equity players in deal activity became virtually non-existent.

Tim Harcourt, chief economist of the Australian Trade Commission (Austrade) recently completed a five city road show in Asia promoting our financial services credentials. He shared some of his insights with Insto.

So, how do Asian investors rate our financial services credentials?

If there was any doubt that 2009 was the year that the domestic bond market had got its groove back, it was well and truly erased in the third quarter, reports Jonathan Shapiro.

Conditions continued to improve, increasing the confidence of both issuers and investors.

From July to September, over A$30 billion of non-government bonds were printed, making it the busiest period of the year, exceeding Q2 total issuance by A$10 million and more than double the amount issued in the third quarter of 2008.

Investors in Australian and international bank subordinated securities could see their investments downgraded as state responses are factored in to credit risk assessments.

Moody’s Investors Service has said that a revised rating methodology for subordinated debt and hybrid securities will be released by the end of November.