Middle East

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Turkiye Vakiflar Bankasi (Vakifbank) added to the recent flood of Turkish supply on Thursday, emerging with initial price thoughts for a new five year dollar bond.

Saudi Arabia’s $17.5bn triple tranche bond was performing well on Thursday morning, tightening 10bp across the curve, and bringing the rest of the region along with it — an impressive feat considering Saudi printed at tighter levels than rival bankers, and investors, were expecting.

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Saudi Arabia’s debut bond was met on Wednesday with enormous demand as investors poured in over $67bn of orders for the triple trancher by mid-morning. The deal, set at $17.5bn, will be the biggest emerging markets sovereign bond ever as one EM specialist questioned how the 30 year piece in particular could be priced so tight.

Turk Eximbank became the third Turkish borrower to tap the dollar market in less than a week on Tuesday, raising $500m of seven year funding.

The CEEMEA bond market exploded into life this week in what will be one of the busiest of the year. Saudi Arabia is leading the action with its much-anticipated bond but Turkey made an impressive comeback with four of its banks in the market following Friday’s sovereign trade. Further supply from Poland, Russia, the Middle East and Africa is adding plenty of diversity for investors.

Primary bond markets were awash with Turkish bank deals on Tuesday as Turk Eximbank, Sekerbank and Kuveyt Turk added to Isbank’s Monday mandate. With books slow to build and Turkey recently losing its investment grade status, lead managers believe new issue premiums will need to offer a reason to invest.

Equate Petrochemical Company, a US and Kuwaiti joint venture, has picked banks for its debut bond issue and, despite heavy supply from Middle East borrowers, bankers have no doubt demand for the deal will be strong.

As Middle Eastern countries reconfigure to lower oil prices, their funding needs could reach $560bn between 2015-2019, said S&P Global Ratings in a report on Monday.

Ahli United Bank Kuwait has opened books on a perpetual dollar sukuk after wrapping up investor meetings on Monday, books were oversubscribed and were due to close on Tuesday, according to leads.

Turkey shrugged of its second downgrade to junk on Friday to print a $1.5bn reopening of its 2026s. And if a sovereign bond was not proof enough that it is capital markets business as usual for the country, state-owned Turkiye Is Bankasi AS (Isbank) was out with a long five year on Monday morning.