HSBC Bank has priced A$1.5 billion ($1.35 billion) of five-year bonds at 125 basis points (BP) over swap and BBSW, it said on Friday, the second foreign bank to tap Australia this week after a near three-year absence. The offer was also the largest non-triple A rated kangaroo bond since that time, HSBC said on Friday.
Over A$11 billion worth of kangaroo bonds, or Australian-dollar denominated bonds sold by foreign borrowers in Australia, have been sold this year, but nearly all of it came from supranational institutions and government-linked agencies.
European and US banks used to regularly sell bonds in Australia, but the appetite for such investments vanished when the global crisis hit.
The HSBC order-book received bids from more than 100 accounts, mostly from fund managers, with strong demand from Asian private banks, said Tony Cripps, head of global banking and markets for HSBC in Australia.
Fund managers and insurance companies took 61 percent of the bonds, followed by private banks with 12 percent, central banks and agencies with 5 percent. The balance was bought by other types of investors.
The bonds were predominantly placed in Australia, which snapped up 67 percent of the offer, followed by Hong Kong with 17 percent and Singapore with 9 percent.