As indicated by Slovak Finance Minister Peter Kažimír last week, Slovakia is to float a dollar-denominated government bond overseas.
According to a Dow Jones report published on the Wall Street Journal webpage, Slovakia is offering the 10-year bond to investors in the US with initial price guidance at 262.5-275 basis points over the reference US Treasury. The lead managers of the sale are Barclays PLC, Citigroup Inc and JPMorgan Chase & Co.
Kažimír announced plans to float a new overseas issue after he returned from a roadshow for investors in the United States. Some other foreign issues can also be expected, Kažimír's aide Radko Kuruc said, as reported by the SITA newswire. As part of the diversification of Slovakia's foreign debt the Finance Ministry is planning, in addition to its successful recent sales in the Czech Republic and Switzerland, to gradually place bonds on other important foreign markets.
For the first time this year Slovakia borrowed on a market outside the eurozone in the second half of February when the Finance Ministry's Debt and Liquidity Management Agency (ARDAL) sold securities worth CZK12.5 billion (approximately €500 million) to Czech investors. The bonds matures in September 2015, and their interest rate is tied to the six-month PRIBOR (Prague InterBank Offered Rate) plus a margin of 1.5 percent p.a. A bond issue on the Swiss market followed in mid-March, when Slovakia floated bonds for CHF425 million (over €350 million). ARDAL says that investors valued the issue very well compared with the bonds of central and eastern European countries present on the secondary Swiss market.
Source: SITA
Compiled by Zuzana Vilikovská from press reports
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