Rating: A-/A (S&P/Fitch)
Amount: Eu600m
Maturity: 9 May 2009
Issue/re-offer price: 99.971
Coupon: three month Euribor plus 15bp
Spread at re-offer: three month Euribor plus 16bp
Launch date: Tuesday 25 April
Payment date: 9 May
Joint books: Fortis Bank, F Van Lanschot Bankiers
Bookrunner's comment:
Fortis Bank — The transaction was well received by investors. Prior to the deal, the issuer went on a roadshow, visiting investors in Frankfurt, Paris and Madrid. Van Lanschot makes regular investor visits, and the previous year he went to Ireland and the UK and the year before that to Scandinavia.
We went out with guidance of 17bp area over Euribor, and the order book quickly grew on the back of this. In total, we had Eu1.1bn of orders, so we tightened guidance to 16bp over, but we were still oversubscribed, which made the allocation process quite tricky.
F Van Lanschot had made it clear that it could not increase the deal, although we were still able to do Eu600m instead of the Eu500m originally planned.
Market appraisal:
"...this seem to be going OK and looked like quite a straightforward issue."
