UK-headquartered telecoms company Vodafone Group, rated Baa1/BBB+/BBB+, has picked Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank and UBS to structure the non-call life structured Reg S bonds. Deutsche Bank is the bookrunner.
In January, there were 18 Formosa trades, totalling more than US$4.75bn, all of which came from financial institutions, according to data on the Taipei Exchange.
“You can see the attraction of going there,” said a London-based bond banker away from the Vodafone transaction. “Lots of buy and hold pension funds looking for yield, and long maturity dollars are attractive for those that can raise in multiple currencies.”
Diversifying investor bases and extending debt maturity profiles are two more reasons a European corporate would look to issue in Taiwan, the banker said.
The last European corporate to tap the Formosa market was A3/A-/A- rated EDF, which printed US$2.655bn of debt across 30 and 40 year tenors in October 2016.