CEE Bonds

Turkey’s Garanti bank has sold its first ever social bond, a $75m private placement. The International Finance Corporation purchased the bond as part of its Banking on Women Programme.

Two issuers from the CEEMEA region — Bulgarian Energy Holding and Ecobank Transnational Inc — have mandated banks for new bonds and are embarking on roadshows, breaking the wait-and-see mode that the market had slipped into over the last week.

Turkey’s Garanti bank has sold its first ever social bond, issuing a $75m private placement. The bond was purchased by the International Finance Corporation as part of its Banking on Women Programme.

Ukrainian Eurobonds weakened early this week as sentiment waned, despite some progress in an anti-corruption law that is a key condition for the disbursement of the next round of funding from the International Monetary Fund, and as the market contemplated the dismissal of respected finance minister Oleksandr Danylyuk.

Unrealistic pricing expectations are keeping two EM corporate issuers by the wayside after volatile markets forced Atrium to cancel a tender offer combined with a new issue last week.

In a rare instance for CEE countries, Romania has printed 30 year dollar bonds.

Slovakia, Croatia and Romania dived into the primary bond market this week — all keen to take advantage of what has been by recent standards a rare period of market stability to print.

Romania has released initial price guidance for a dollar bond offering around a 30bp-40bp pick-up over its outstanding curve, according to a banker away from the deal.

The Republic of Croatia pulled pricing for its €750m 2.7% 2028 bond 30bp tighter than initial price guidance on Wednesday, bringing the reoffer spread nearly flat to the outstanding curve.

The Republic of Croatia released initial price guidance for a 10 year bond on Wednesday morning and books for the deal are already in excess of €1.3bn.

Slovakia sold 10 year and 50 year bonds from a combined book of over €5bn on Tuesday, the first European sovereign bond since Italy-led volatility last week turned government bond traders’ screens into a kaleidoscope of reds and greens. It was also the longest CEE print in over a decade.

Slovakia revised pricing downwards on its rare 50 year bond on Tuesday morning, after taking books of over €5.3bn with the first trade from the central and eastern Europe region for nearly two weeks.