Online articles

• Australia’s big guns fire early in 2025

  The annual roundtable discussion for the heads of funding at Australia’s big-four banks, hosted by KangaNews and RBC Capital Markets, took place in the first weeks of the new year – just as the big four were ramping up their wholesale issuance activities once more. Following another year of domestic market growth and with further changes afoot in the additional capital space, the issuers talk about their plans and...

• Momentum maintained for majors as new year brings supply boom

  Investors packed into the first deals of the new year from Australia’s major banks – at home and in global markets – despite spreads verging on historically tight levels. Issuers say tailwinds from 2024 continued to underpin demand, provided execution was managed well in a particularly busy global primary market.

• NZDM lets syndication take more of the load

  New Zealand Debt Management increased the cap on the volume it was prepared to take in its latest syndicated tap transaction, having used the same approach for its most recent new line introductory trade. While it printed short of the cap on this occasion, the sovereign issuer suggests it is open to placing more volume via syndication to ease the pressure on its tender schedule.

• Rational reallocation

  The question of where the A$43 billion currently allocated to Australian banks’ additional tier-one securities will land has been discussed in the financial press in a manner that brings to mind a group of feckless offspring carving up an inheritance. The impact of the demise of this asset class will in all likelihood be minimal in the context of Australian dollar capital markets – but it is part of a wider trend...

• Securitisation industry shifts focus to capacity

  One of the best-received panel sessions at the Australian Securitisation Forum’s 2024 conference reviewed the limits of growth in Australian dollar securitisation. The back end of a record year for supply volume is an appropriate juncture to discuss the upper limit of capacity – but views diverge on where this might be or what steps should be taken next.

• Smaller states make a splash in volatile rates market

  With just two out of the first five syndicated semi-government deals priced in early 2025 coming from the three largest state government issuers, Australia’s smaller state and territory borrowers have seized a window of opportunity to make progress on their funding tasks – despite choppy conditions in the global rates market.

• SSAs deliver on anticipated fast start to 2025’s Kangaroo market

  Global high-grade issuers burst out of the gates in the first few trading days of 2025 to print A$10.1 billion of new bonds in the first few days of the year. Records abound for issuers and market participants remain optimistic about demand from global investors, though even in mid-January deal sources predicted a dialling-back of near-term supply.

• Team Australia hits the road to fulfil expanded issuance task

  The early weeks of 2025 suggested markets are picking up where they left off at the end of the previous year: ample liquidity and generally favourable issuance conditions for good-quality borrowers despite periodic volatility prompted by a febrile geopolitical environment. Australia’s high-grade issuers enter the year with plenty of funding to do and – in the case of semi-governments – heightened scrutiny on their...

• The view from a new height

  The Australian securitisation industry and its international participants gathered – in record number – at the Australian Securitisation Forum’s annual conference in Sydney in early December 2024. Discussion topics took in the record year for new issuance, future capacity and alternative funding options, credit risk profiles and the economic outlook, and market function and liquidity.