Online articles

• Australian dollar securitisation issuance rebounds

  Australia’s securitisation market has maintained deal volume at a level in line with outcomes from recent years despite massive upheaval to the supply and demand picture in 2020. In particular, bank issuers have been all-but absent this year. A particularly active September and October for new issuance kept annual volume robust.

• Before the deluge

  In mid-October, the EU embarked on a funding programme so large that European market participants say it could reshape the European market and have ripple-effect consequences for others. There is no suggestion that the supply cannot be digested by the euro market, but other issuers may adjust their funding plans around the EU’s jumbo issuance forecast.

• Changes for the long haul

  With so much going on in the here and now, the fact that Australasian fixed-income markets have fundamentally changed in 2020 has passed almost without comment. It is time to start asking what impact massively increased sovereign-sector issuance and massively reduced bank supply will have – and whether these changes will be permanent.

• Communication key as rating pressure mounts

  Ratings across the sovereign and subsovereign sector have come under considerable strain during the COVID-19 era as governments seek to ensure the health and economic wellbeing of their citizens in an environment of falling revenue. Germany’s federal state of Baden-Württemberg, and its development agency L-Bank, provide a model for managing the fallout.

• Conditions stabilise for New Zealand corporates as investors flood in

  A flurry of corporate deals have reopened the New Zealand market with high levels of demand, seemingly undeterred by the latest lockdowns. Deal sources say demand has always been present, especially in the retail space, but it is only now that issuers have been willing to test the waters for new issuance.

• Eye of the storm

  When Australia went into lockdown, transport and shipping infrastructure saw an unprecedented business shock. Airport and toll-road passenger numbers collapsed while even freight flows dropped as the global economy ground to a halt. In October, KangaNews and Westpac Institutional Bank gathered key players in the Australian sector to discuss business impact, balance-sheet resilience and the swift rebound of debt...

• Going with the flow

  Trading capability, including a willingness to deploy balance sheet to support client needs, has long been a major differentiating factor for ANZ’s all-conquering fixed-income business. A group of the bank’s traders gathered to talk about 2020 at a KangaNews roundtable, including views on the extraordinary circumstances of the year and how liquidity may be affected for some time to come.

• ING holds the line on Australian ambitions

  The events of 2020 could have tested ING Bank’s commitment to building its wholesale balance sheet in Australia. Instead, says Charles Ho, the bank’s Sydney-based managing director and head of wholesale banking, it has used its sectoral expertise and strong local retail brand to grow its exposure – and prepare for a further expansion of debt-market coverage.

• KangaNews DCM Summit economic outlook webinar

  The latest in the KangaNews Debt Capital Markets Summit 2020 webinar series included an outlook on the Australian economy and bond market approaching the end of a tumultuous year. Discussion focused on the scale of fiscal support still required, how central-bank stimulus will be deployed and the outlook for key indicators including the housing market.

• Meridian rolls out all-green financing strategy

  Meridian Energy became the latest New Zealand corporate issuer to certify its entire debt programme under environmental criteria, with the 26 August launch of its green financing programme. All Meridian’s debt instruments – a book totalling NZ$1.8 billion (US$1.2 billion) – are covered by the programme, which means its existing and, potentially, future domestic and US private placement issuance is now in green-bond...

• New horizon for specialist investors

  Australia’s private-debt market and the investors that specialise in it are not new phenomena. What is new is a headline cash rate at close to zero and the withdrawal of supply from the biggest historical source of local credit issuance – the major banks. Specialist investors say their sector is attracting more interest and inflows on the back of this changed environment.

• New opportunities for New Zealand securitisation

  A more optimistic tone has emerged in New Zealand’s securitisation market on the back of two primary-market transactions and the emergence of a potential large-scale new issuer. The tone is markedly different from the first half of the year, when market participants did not expect to see deal flow in 2020.

• New Zealand corporates return to green-bond market

  As well as a clutch of mainstream corporate bond deals, the New Zealand market welcomed the return of corporate green-bond issuance in September. Mercury reopened the market with the first deal in nearly a year, followed in a matter of weeks by a third green-bond transaction from Argosy Property.

• Reconstructive surgery

  New Zealand investors face ultra-low rates and a radically reshaped credit-supply picture. As New Zealand struggles in the wake of COVID-19 – despite having been, at least for now, effectively able to eliminate the virus locally – the domestic buy side is considering its new strategy.

• Responsible lending: unleashing banks, leashing nonbanks?

  The Australian federal government has proposed changes to responsible-lending rules, with the goal of encouraging credit supply and thus maximising the economic impact of ultra-low rates. Nonbank lenders are watching developments closely and with some concern that they may further tilt the playing field in favour of authorised deposit-taking institutions (ADIs).

• Rocky road ahead

  The 2020 iteration of the KangaNews-Moody’s Investors Service Corporate Borrower’s Intentions Survey highlights the response of corporate Australia and New Zealand to COVID-19. The results show treasury teams are anticipating a rocky path out of the crisis and a heightened domestic focus to their funding plans.

• State of rates: Australia's high-grade market in depth

  On 22 October, KangaNews hosted the latest in the KangaNews Debt Capital Markets Summit 2020 webinar series. The session had a rates-market flavour, including a discussion between some of Australia’s leading market participants about how massively increased sovereign issuance, central-bank intervention and a raft of new dynamics will shape their sector.