Scania, a Swedish truckmaker with operations in more than 100 countries, has entered an interest-rate swap to convert the proceeds of a fixed-rate bond it sold earlier this month into a floating-rate liability. The company entered the swap for most of the EUR500 million (USD441 million) it raised through the bond offering, according to Jan Bergman, head of the treasury in Södertälje. He said the company issued a fixed-rate deal to meet investor demand but it prefers to have the liability in floating-rate for its own risk management purposes.
In the swap, Scania will receive the 6% coupon of the bond and pay roughly 94 basis points over three-month Euribor. The swap matches the five-year tenor of the bond offering. Although Sweden is one of three countries, Denmark and the U.K. are the other two, in the European Union not to use the euro, Bergman said the proceeds will be kept in euros because of the company's extensive operations in the euro-zone. Deutsche Bank and SEB led the bond deal, but Bergman said the swap was conducted with three other relationship banks not involved in the deal, whom he declined to name. Scania chooses derivatives counterparties from among its relationship banks based on price.