ANZ kicked off issuance for the week as expected, with the pricing of its Â¥150 billion wholesale Samurai bond issue on Tuesday. This was followed the next day with the pricing of a Â¥30 billion retail Samurai issue. The wholesale bonds were priced at 68 basis points over Japanese swap/Libor with a five-year term to maturity, while the retail bonds priced at 40 bps over swap for a 3.5 year term to maturity. Despite the pricing achieved on the issues, the funding would have cost the bank more than it did Westpac, which tapped the Samurai market the week before. The reason for this is that the sudden re-opening of the Samurai market has driven the yen basis swap to levels which now make Samurai issuance cost prohibitive. At the same time, the Australian dollar basis swap has widened, making any international bond issuance more expensive. Samurai funding is now estimated to be 25 bps to 30 bps more expensive than a week ago and for this reason, nab postponed its Samurai bond issue almost as soon as it announced it. And clearly CBA opted for a huge domestic market issue instead. Back in December CBA set some records in the domestic market: the largest single tranche issue - $1.9 billion; the largest issue (multi-tranche but same maturity date) - $2.2 billion; and the largest non-guaranteed issue, since government guarantees became available - $500 million. On Thursday the Commonwealth Bank broke two of those records.The bank's issued $2.0 billion of fixed rate, five-year, bonds at 70 bps over swap and $500 million of floating rate notes with the same maturity, at 70 bps over bank bills. The pricing also sets a new benchmark for public issuance of government guaranteed bonds. The last public five-year issue by a major bank was undertaken by ANZ at the end of January, with the bonds being priced at 75 bps over swap. National Australia Bank's $500 million private placement, which we reported last week, was priced at 69 bps over swap.However, CBA failed to break its non-guaranteed issuance record, as it only managed to attract demand for $250 million of non-guaranteed three-year bonds, on Thursday. The pricing at 130 bps was, however, better than the 160 bps that the bank had to pay in December.Government bond tenders are being rushed, but it is unlikely to be sustainable.It appears that the preference of the vast majority of investors continues to be for government guaranteed bonds and even direct Commonwealth Government exposure, as evidenced by the success of AOFM's three bond tenders in just over a week, raising $1.8 billion.AOFM held a third bond tender on Friday for another $600 million of bonds, which was 2.9 times oversubscribed. The previous two issues were both oversubscribed by 2.6 times.While demand is this strong overcrowding of the bond market does not appear to be a concern.  A further mitigant is a likely slowing in the pace of bond issuance from the major banks going forward, although much will