Bond Deals of the Year: Public sector borrowers — Debuts and derring-do define SSAs  

The European Union (EU) sealed another year of eye-catching syndications in 2025, which it issues in well-telegraphed windows.

In 2025, that strategy resulted in the EU pricing in the aftermath of Germany’s “whatever it takes” moment in February and the US tariff scare in April.

But the standout was September’s syndication, which happened the day after then French prime minister François Bayrou lost a confidence vote, before also losing his job.

The EU could have held back but it didn’t falter, pricing an €11bn sale backed by almost €200bn of demand and shaking off any fears that the French government’s collapse might disrupt its market access.

OATs had long been an important reference for EU bonds, but France’s economic and political struggles have decoupled the two products.

The September transaction offered the strongest statement to the market that the EU’s bonds trade on their own terms now, while the issuer proved it could maintain its predictable issuance pattern as a safe haven issuer.

CAF’s record $2bn five year deal from January was a transaction that impressed the market on many levels.

The trade marked the biggest bond that the Caracas-based multilateral development bank (MDB) has ever sold, yet it was just one of a string of highly successful, immensely popular transactions it pulled off in 2025.

It sold hybrid capital in June and broke its own record for orders in euros in September, but it was its dollar deal from January that best exemplified how far the issuer has progressed in just a few years.

The bond was priced 50bp inside where CAF sold a deal of the same tenor exactly one year before, both versus Sofr mid-swaps and US Treasuries. The issuer paid just 40bp on top of the European Investment Bank, when it had been trading at twice that spread a year before.

This transaction was proof of CAF’s evolution as a credit — the fruit of a combination of tireless investor relations work and reliability in bringing large, liquid bonds that perform in the secondary market.

As an issuer, the Bank of England is best known for its metronomic funding strategy: since 2007, the Bank has issued a three year dollar bond of around $2bn once a year to finance its foreign currency reserves.

But in October, it spiced things up with an additional $2.5bn five year trade that marked an important break from tradition. Investors embraced the change with enthusiasm, pouring a whopping $11.4bn of orders into the book.

The transaction won praise from bankers on and off the deal, who referred to the result as “impressive”, “great” — or simply, “wow”.

The $2.5bn size was the largest the BoE has ever raised, and it managed to achieve that paying just 8bp over US Treasuries.

Market participants viewed expanding to two deals a year as a positive for the BoE, which showcased a more flexible approach to funding as it widens its investor base.

Queensland Treasury Corporation (QTC) became the first Australian semi-government issuer to sell a benchmark in the international capital markets with its euro debut in May.

The deal opened a new funding avenue for its peers, with Treasury Corporation of Victoria selling a €2bn 15 year in September.

QTC faced challenges along the way. The first was getting to know the investor base, which it did on an intensive two-week roadshow covering London, Paris, Munich, Frankfurt, Luxembourg and Amsterdam in March.

Then US tariffs struck, bringing volatility to the market and demanding patience and vigilance of a debut issuer in particular.

Pricing was also a matter of debate given the bonds were not eligible Eurosystem collateral.

But the sale was a triumph, QTC tightening the spread 4bp during execution as it amassed €9.3bn of orders. The bonds then performed a further 10bp, meaning QTC has surely earned itself a repeat invitation to euros, which in turn has also helped its

domestic spreads.

The Gilt market has had not its most straightforward year thanks to concerns about the UK’s public finances and growth. However, the UK Debt Management Office brought out a series of record-breaking Gilt syndications.

After setting a new size record with a £13bn syndication earlier in the year, it beat that with its £14bn sale of 10 year Gilts in September.

The order book reached an impressive £141bn, but it was the quality rather than quantity that enabled the DMO to price its biggest syndication yet.

Particularly impressive was the diversity in the order book, with 40% of the bonds allocated to non-UK investors — “a strong recognition of the UK as an issuer and sterling as a reserve currency for central banks,” as one of the bankers involved in the transaction put it.

The European Investment Bank (EIB) was the first supranational to print a European Green Bond (EuGB) — a new label aligned with the European Green Bond Standard, seen as a new gold standard for its ties to the EU Taxonomy for Sustainable Activities.

The EIB was not the first issuer, or even the first SSA, to use the label but none of the others were as large and liquid, or as influential.

In fact, SSA peers said they had been waiting to see what the EIB would do in EuGBs before deciding their own path.

Investor confidence is key in new markets and bringing a deal that not only showcases but also helps increase confidence is part of the EIB’s role.

It delivered. The bond remains the largest EuGB to date, having attracted 300 investors with €40bn of orders. Now it plans to print more.

The deal was also a breakthrough when it came to Taxonomy criteria to ‘Do No Significant Harm’, something issuers have struggled to align with. The bond showed issuers could “align to the logic of the Taxonomy by proxy”, said a bookrunner, offering confidence to other borrowers.

The CIF Capital Markets Mechanism (CCMM) was a new supranational issuer to the market this year, using an innovative structure in January to leverage a fund, the Clean Technology Fund (CTF).

CTF is one of the two funds that form the CIF, or the Climate Investment Funds, which were created 17 years ago to finance the green transition in developing countries.

The World Bank is the trustee and treasury manager for CIF. The $500m three year bond that it helped to sell in January not only boosted CTF’s capacity for lending but also raised the prospect for other such bodies to gain capital market access.

The CCMM structure is similar, yet different, to the International Finance Facility for Immunisation and allows the CTF to access loan repayments due in the future, therefore enabling it to make new loans faster.

The CCMM’s links to six major multilateral development banks helped it access traditional SSA investors, but its ability to mobilise private sector investors impressed. They made up two thirds of the allocation.

Structuring and executing what some considered to be a “truly trailblazing” transaction, has opened up opportunities for development finance institutions to use similar structures to fund other needs.