Strong demand for RHB Bank notes

PETALING JAYA: RHB Bank Bhd’s five-year US$300mil-nominal value senior unsecured notes have been oversubscribed by more than six times, with a final price guidance orderbook of over US$1.8bil.

The strong demand allowed RHB Bank to tighten guidance to 128 basis points over five-year US Treasury at a yield of 3.766% per annum, representing the tightest credit spread for a South-East Asia/ South Asia issuance to date.

The issuance of the senior notes is expected to be completed by Feb 19, 2019 and will be listed on the Singapore Exchange Securities Trading Ltd and Labuan International Financial Exchange Inc.

“We are pleased with the strong interest in our US$300mil bond issue, which is able to attract interest from a diverse investor base across Asia and Europe.

“The pricing level reflects the strong confidence from the global investment community in RHB Bank, as well as the overall investor sentiment towards Malaysia,” said RHB Banking Group managing director Datuk Khairussaleh Ramli in a statement.

Net proceeds from the issuance of the senior notes will be utilised for general working capital purposes.

The senior notes mark the third issuance of RHB Bank’s US$5bil euro medium-term note programme established on Sept 23, 2014.

It is also the first US-dollar public benchmark issuance by a Malaysian financial institution since April 2017 and is rated A3 by Moody’s Investors Service Inc.

By geographical distribution, Asian investors were allocated 95% and European investors 5%.

In terms of investor type, fund managers and insurance companies were allocated 67% of the issue while banks were allocated 29%, with the remaining 4% being allocated to private banks.

RHB Investment Bank Bhd, Credit Suisse (Singapore) Ltd and the Hongkong and Shanghai Banking Corp Ltd are the joint lead managers for the senior notes issuance.