Africa Bonds

Tunisia launched a $500m seven year bond this week with a full guarantee from USAID, as part of US efforts to help the country through its transition to a new democratically elected government.

Islamic bankers don’t need new excuses to travel to the world’s sunnier climes, but meetings in Mauritius next to its pristine coral sand beaches could soon become a feature of the market – and not just for obvious reasons.

Tunisia has picked JP Morgan and Natixis for a seven year dollar bond.

Nigerian oil and gas company Seven Energy has joined the burgeoning family of Africa high yield borrowers, picking banks for a benchmark sized debut dollar deal. An African mining corporation is also eyeing the high yield market, and bankers are expecting a steady of procession of corporate deals from the continent throughout the rest of this year.

Senegal has closed and priced its debut XOF100bn ($200.5m) four-year sukuk with a 6.25% profit rate, the first medium term Islamic bond offering out of Africa of 2014 and the first Sub-Saharan sovereign sukuk ever apart from Nigeria's State of Osun last year.

Each of the CEEMEA bonds priced on Thursday was trading up in the secondary market on Friday morning. Russian paper shows little signs of recovering from its beating, but the wider market has remained largely immune to the US sanctions imposed on Wednesday.

Nigeria is reopening outstanding Naira bonds and has picked banks for a roadshow starting on July 21.

Luxembourg’s KBL Bankers returned as a primary dealer for the International Islamic Liquidity Management Corp’s seventh sukuk, as the company reissued its rolling $860m of three-month commercial paper on Thursday.

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The South African sovereign and First Bank of Nigeria opted to open books on Thursday despite coinciding with a wide scale sell-off in Russian risk. Both issuers priced successful deals on the same day, although debt bankers away from the South African bond wondered whether the sovereign should have postponed it.

Cote d'Ivoire took another step on the road to recovery with a hugely successful $750m 10 year bond this week. Investors, analysts and syndicate officials all had their own ideas on pricing. But in the end the leads priced the deal some 50bp tighter than most investors had asked for and still watched the bond trade up in the secondary market.

Ivory Coast’s new $750m 10 year bond was up 40 cents in the secondary market on Thursday, despite being priced with a yield that was 50bp tighter than most investors had asked for, said debt bankers involved.