Access Bank Seeks Additional Tier 1 Eurobond Issuance

 

Herbert Wigwe, Access Bank GMD

After a successful return from the international capital market, Access Bank Plc has announced the group would be raising additional Tier-1 Eurobond issuance, according to a statement issued to the Nigerian Exchange today.

Recall the Pan-Africa lender this month raised $500 million senior unsecured Eurobond in the international market. The amount to be raised in the second round was not provided but some analysts told MarketForces it would likely close an additional $500 million in the new raise.

In the previous international debt market visit in September, the bank had announced the bond achieved the lowest Nigerian bank Eurobond coupon, which was oversubscribed more than three times with an order book of over $1.6 billion.

The bank mandates Citi, J.P Morgan, Renaissance Capita and Mashreqbank as joint book-runners while Chapel Hill Denham and Coronation Merchant bank will serve as its financial advisers and joint book runners to arrange a global investors’ call on next week Monday.

This is expected to come in addition to series of fixed income investors call, Access Bank said in the statement. It said the issuance is of an inaugural Basel 111 perpetual non-call 5.25-year benchmark United States dollar-denominated.

“Additional Tier 1 bond offering under the bank’s global medium-term note programme may follow, subject to market condition”, the group added.

Moody’s had assigned provisional ratings to the USD1.5 billion Global Medium-Term Note programme of Access Bank Plc with (P)B2 / (P)Not-Prime long-term and short-term local currency and foreign currency senior unsecured rating.

It said the (P) B2 rating assigned to the senior unsecured class of notes of the GMTN programme is aligned with Access Bank’s B2 long-term deposit rating.

The rating incorporates the fact that the senior unsecured notes issued under the GMTN programme will be direct, unconditional, unsubordinated, and unsecured obligations of the bank and rank pari passu with all other present and future unsubordinated and unsecured obligations of the bank.

Under the programme, it said Access Bank may issue notes up to a maximum aggregate amount of USD1.5 billion. As Moody’s issues provisional ratings in advance of the final issuance under the program, these ratings only represent Moody’s preliminary credit opinion.

Moody’s said it will endeavour to assign definitive ratings to actual issuances from the GMTN program, adding that a definitive rating may differ from a provisional rating if the terms and conditions of the issuance are materially different from those of the programme reviewed.

Access Bank Seeks Additional Tier 1 Eurobond Issuance