Australian dollar product holds relative edge for Japanese investors as policy backdrop shifts
The rationale for Japanese investor engagement with the Australian dollar market should remain in place even if – as many on the local buy side increasingly anticipate – Japan’s monetary policy takes further steps toward normalisation in 2024. Meanwhile, Australian dollar spreads in most asset classes continue to stack up on a relative basis.
SSA market embraces diversity to welcome CAF back with all-time biggest deal
The early weeks of 2024 welcomed record deal flow in the supranational, sovereign and agency Kangaroo market, but with the large majority of supply coming from the sector’s biggest and most frequent issuers. CAF – Development Bank of Latin America has demonstrated the market’s willingness to engage with a more diverse issuer by pricing its largest transaction in Australian dollars and its first of benchmark size since 2018.
Demand rewards Plenti’s full structure ABS offering and scales lead manager bid
Plenti Finance is the first issuer to test the Australian dollar market’s support for nonmortgage asset-backed securities in 2024. Deal sources say there was robust support for Plenti’s offering with high coverage ratios across all tranches that allowed significant scaling of the lead manager bid.
VWFS Australia turns up the volume in domestic return
Volkswagen Financial Services Australia opened the Australian dollar market for corporate issuers in 2024 with its largest deal by volume in more than four years. The deal was 1.4 times oversubscribed and achieved a good pricing outcome, the issuer says.
NAB goes longer with euro covered-bond return
While Australia’s major banks have focused primarily – if not exclusively – on their domestic market for funding at the start of 2024, National Australia Bank demonstrated global appetite for these credits with a euro covered-bond return on 29 January. The €1.25 billion seven-year deal achieved record demand and price tightening for an Australian bank in this format, deal sources say, and reflects emerging appetite for longer duration in the region.