On Monday, French vehicle parts supplier Valeo sold a €600m seven year deal. On Tuesday, Manpower priced a €500m eight year offering. And on Wednesday, Schneider went one year longer for its €750m trade.
Leads HSBC, JP Morgan, MUFG, Natixis and Société Générale announced the nine year benchmark transaction with initial price thoughts of 80bp over mid-swaps. Research house CreditSights suggested this was 45bp wider than Schneider’s longest outstanding bond, a December 2026 note. At that level, this implied a 40bp new issue premium, taking into account the maturity extension.
CreditSights said that this was a similar approach to that of Valeo on Monday, offering a sizeable concession to ensure that all goes smoothly with the transaction.
Like Valeo’s approach, it also worked well. An order book of €3.6bn allowed the leads to guide investors to 60bp-65bp over mid-swaps and set the size at €750m. The order book grew slightly more to €3.75bn and so the leads were able to price the deal at 60bp.