Margin halved for Woodside in 144A market

There was more international bond market issuance last week. NAB apparently made up for the failure of its domestic issue the week before, by issuing 475 million Swiss francs of Eurobonds and floating rate notes. On Monday NAB issued 325 million Swiss francs of five-year, fixed-rate, bonds priced at a margin of 48 basis points over mid-swaps. The next day, nab followed up with a three-year issue of 150 million Swiss francs of EFRNs, priced at Libor plus 31 bps.
 
Commonwealth Bank also issued 150 million Swiss francs of three-year EFRNs with the same pricing, on the same day.

Later in the week CBA hit the Euromarket for €1.5 billion of seven-year funds, priced at 108 bps over mid-swaps. This would have swapped back at around 140 bps over.

The Australian branch of Rabobank added another A$100 million to its July 2012 line, taking outstandings to A$700 million.

Woodside Petroleum (rated A-) however, was the standout issuer of the week, raising US$700 million, for five years, in the US s144A market. The issue was priced at 230 bps over US Treasuries and at 187 bps over swap.

This margin is considerably wider than the T+95 bps paid by Coca-Cola Amatil for five-year funds, just the week before, but CCA is obviously a special case.

Nevertheless, this is a vast improvement on the more than 600 bps over that Woodside paid for US$1.0 billion of five- and ten-year funds in the same market, in February.