Cheshire Building Society (Cheshire) has signed a £750 million ($1.1 billion) Euro-MTN programme and has become the second building society to join the market this year. The signing, which was completed on June 10, will "Give a little bit of long-term funding and spread our funding base longer at reasonable prices," according to John Astbury, the treasurer at Cheshire. The first trade will be done in July and will be denominated in sterling. It is likely to have a maturity of three years, but Astbury says it could be as long as five years. No trade will go out further than 10 years however and structures will not be considered. Derbyshire Building Society signed its £1 billion Euro-MTN facility in March this year and there are now 20 building societies with programmes. Despite the competition Astbury says no roadshow will be done as he is confident of finding funds when he needs them. He says: "Our bankers have assured us that there will not be any problems with attracting investors - we're in there with the rest of them." The issuer is rated Baa1 by Moody's. The dealers are Barclays Capital (also the arranger), Deutsche Bank, Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein, HSBC, Salomon Smith Barney and The Royal Bank of Scotland.
June 14, 2002