More corporate bonds and more RMBS

There are more signs of interest by corporates in using the retail bond market, with Healthscope reported to be looking to raise $170 million.

Commonwealth Bank is already marketing a $500 million, five-year floating rate note, for which it issued the prospectus last week.

At the professional end of the market, CBA upsized its RMBS issue of  BankWest-sourced loans by one third, to $1 billion. One of the attractions was a fixed rate tranche that was part of the issue. This was the first time since 2004 that any lender had sold a fixed rate tranche.

Non-bank lender Resimac will issue $400 million of RMBS via five classes of notes. One tranche, with a weighted average life of 1.5 years, is being sold at a yield of 105 basis points over bank bill swap. The AOFM will invest in this pool of loans.

Stockland became the first property company to issue 10-year debt since December 2004. The company sold $160 million of notes, due in November 2020, while also making a partial buy-back of $70 million of 2011 and 2013 notes.

With the transaction, Stockland managed to lengthen its weighted average debt maturity to 6.1 years from 6.2 year. Most of Stockland's debt is in foreign currencies, with the majority in the US and UK markets.

In other news, Sydney Airport announced plans to buy back all outstanding 2011 bonds, totalling $282 million. It is unclear if there will be bond sale to fund this buy-back or if the US$500 million raised last month will be used for this purpose.

And more junk debt is likely to come on to the market, with Fortescue Metals saying it will fund its US$8.4 billion expansion with one or more new bank or bond debt facilities.