African Development Bank re-opens five-year bond priced at $500m for third time

The African Development Bank last week said for the third time, it has successfully repoend its five-year global bond priced at $500 million.

The bond, which was originally issued in January 2013 brings the new total issue size to $2.175 billion, says AfDB April 26, 2013.

This is the third reopening of this 5-year line and is now the Bank’s largest outstanding Global transaction to date, the Tunis-based Bank noted in a statement.

According to the AfDB, the issue was driven by “strong reverse enquiry interest from key high quality accounts”.

It explains that demand coming out of the Asian central bank community was particularly robust which prompted the offering to be upsized from an initially planned $100 million size, to $500 million.

“Asian investors came in as the largest buyers at 55%. American and European investors bought 32 and 13% respectively,” the AfDB said.

It adds, “The eight accounts involved included high quality orders from central banks and official institutions, which bought 65% of the deal, while banks bought 32% and asset managers 3%.”

The lead managers of the bond re-opening were Deutsche Bank and  TD Securities.

The AfDB indicated that the bond matures in just under five years on 15 March 2018,

By Ekow Quandzie