Rizal Commercial Banking Corp. (RCBC), the banking unit of the Yuchengco Group., raised $400 million from the sale of debt papers on strong demand from Asian and European investors.
RCBC said in a disclosure to the stock exchange Thursday the five-year senior unsecured sustainability notes were offered with a coupon rate of 5.5 per annum. The bank issued the notes, which will mature in January 2029, as part of its $3-billion medium-term note program.
RCBC’s return to the US dollar bond market saw strong interest from a wide range of high-quality Asian and European investors, which allowed it to tighten final price guidance to 165 basis points over the five-year Treasury yield.
“It is worth noting that the final order book was 5.9x oversubscribed at $2.3 billion, with orders from more than 164 accounts—clearly reflecting global investors’ continued confidence in RCBC and their positive outlook on the credit,” the bank said.
The order book was well diversified as 78 percent were allocated to asset managers, 13 percent to banks, 6 percent to official institutions, insurance companies, pension funds and 3 percent to private banks, security firms and brokers.
The notes, which were issued with denominations of $200,000 and increments of $1,000 thereafter will settle on Jan. 17, 2024. They will be listed on the Singapore Exchange, similar to the bank’s two outstanding US dollar-denominated bonds.
The bank said it would use the proceeds from the fund-raising activity to finance and/or refinance its loans to customers or its owned operating activities in eligible green and social categories as defined in its Sustainable Finance Framework.
Australia and New Zealand Banking Group Ld., Citigroup Markets Ltd. and SMBC Nikko Securities (Hong Kong) Ltd. acted as joint book runners for this transaction.