Intanto anche Bayer corre a fare provvista di cash. Lanciata una emissione senior da 1,3 mld euro dopo aver emesso un bond nelle scorse settimane per 350 mln GBP...
Alcune info.
Bayer Completes Its Biggest Bond Issue Since 2006 (Update1)
By Esteban Duarte
March 23 (Bloomberg) --
Bayer AG, Germany’s largest drugmaker, raised 1.3 billion euros ($1.8 billion) in its biggest bond issue since 2006.
The notes due September 2014 were priced to yield 190 basis points more than the benchmark mid-swap rate, according to Deutsche Bank AG, one of the sale arrangers. That compares with a spread of 210 to 220 basis points proposed earlier. A basis point is 0.01 percentage point.
Companies are tapping demand for investment-grade corporate bonds as investors snap up some of the highest yields relative to government debt ever available. Sales of bonds in Europe total 337 billion euros so far in 2009, the busiest start to a year on record.
“It’s a relatively defensive name, a well-known, blue-chip company with a single A rating,” said
Suki Mann, a London-based credit strategist at Societe Generale SA. “These are features which exhibit all the hallmarks of an issuer which is just perfect for this market.”
Bayer’s bond sale is the largest by the Leverkusen, Germany-based company since May 2006, when the inventor of aspirin issued 2.6 billion euros of debt due this year and in 2013, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That month it also sold 350 million pounds ($506 million) of notes maturing in 2018, Bloomberg data show.
Guenter Forneck, a spokesman for the drugmaker, declined to comment on the bond sale.
The average spread on investment-grade bonds sold by non- financial companies in Europe widened 3 basis points in the past week to an average 275 basis points over swaps, according to Merrill Lynch & Co. data.
Bayer rose 40 cents, or 1.06 percent, to 38.14 at 4:54 p.m. in Frankfurt today, trimming its decline this year to 8 percent.
The drugmaker is graded at A3 by Moody’s Investors Service, its seventh-highest investment-grade ranking, and an equivalent A- by Standard & Poor’s.
Bayer’s bond issue was managed by Calyon, Deutsche Bank AG and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
