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DEAL DIGEST
The Singapore dollar bond market, already the most positive new capital markets story in Asia this year, has broken new ground once again with a S$1.3 billion (US$741.6 million), 15-year non-call-10 subordinated bond issue by UOB.
The Singaporean bank issued the bond, the largest ever in Singapore dollars, as part of the financing for its acquisition of local rival OUB. JPMorgan, Merrill Lynch and UOB Asia were joint bookrunners for the upper tier two deal.
It seems the liquidity of the Singapore dollar market for bank issues knows no bounds. DBS and OCBC had already launched record-breaking issues in the local market in recent months, and it seemed unlikely that there would be room for another; indeed, three weeks before the UOB deal, OCBC's CFO, Chris Matters, told Asiamoney: "If there's any more money out there, I want to know where it is." But in fact UOB's offer was upsized from S$750 million on the back of a book of demand that topped S$2 billion.
The structure is also significant, with the longest tenor ever achieved in the...