Dexia Municipal Agency, the funding arm of Dexia's public finance and financial services business line, has entered interest-rate swaps on two recent bond offerings. It converted a EUR1 billion (USD1.12 million) and a EUR500 million fixed-rate offering into floating. Florence Lemonnier, head of investor relations in Paris, said it is the company's policy to use interest rate swaps to convert all fixed-rate debt into floating-rate.
In the swaps, Dexia pays a Euribor-based rate and receives the fixed-rate coupons on the bonds, noted Lemonnier. The EUR500 million offering has a coupon of 4.25% and a maturity of 10 years and the EUR1 billion deal has a 3.25% coupon and matures in five years. The maturities of the swaps match the bonds. Lemonnier added that at some point, the company will enter swaps to pay EONIA-the Euro Overnight Index Average--and receive the Euribor-based rate. This is because Dexia lends using an EONIA-based rate and needs to make sure payment dates between its assets and liabilities match.
Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and Société Générale are the swap counterparties for the EUR500 million bond and CDC IXIS and BNP Paribas are the counterparties on the EUR1 billion swap. Lemonnier said the banks were chosen because they were the lead managers on the offerings.
