Belarusian Finance Ministry to launch Eurobond road show March 2
MINSK. Feb 27 (Interfax) - The Belarusian Finance Ministry will launch a Eurobond road show on March 2.
Meetings with investors will take place in several U.S. cities, in Frankfurt and in London, the ministry told Interfax.
"All preparations are complete, all permits have been obtained and this is effectively the launch of the offering," it said.
The ministry is thinking of offering a bond tranche denominated in dollars and maturing in 2035 and a tranche in euros maturing in 2026 or 2028.
"The timing reflects the current profile of public debt repayments and servicing. A final decision on the volume of each tranche and the coupon rate will be reached as a result of the road show and will take market conditions into consideration," the ministry said.
The organizers are Citi, Raiffeisen Bank International AG, Societe Generale and Renaissance Capital.
A banking sector source told Interfax that First Deputy Belarusian Prime Minister Dmitry Krutoi, Finance Minister Maxim Yermolovich, Deputy Finance Minister Andrei Belkovets and Deputy Economy Minister Dmitry Yaroshevich would attend the meetings with investors.
Belarus may place $1 billion-$1.2 billion of Eurobonds in Q1 2020 if the market conditions are favorable, Finance Minister Maxim Yermolovich said in January.
"Regarding Eurobonds, everything's going according to plan. Based on the market's possibilities, we expect to be able to bring them to the market in the near future. We project that it will be in the first quarter. The placement will total something like $1 billion-$1.2 billion," Yermolovich said.
The Finance Ministry is technically ready to tap the market in Q1 and "we will be deciding when to tap it, on the advisability of this, depending on the state of the market itself," he said. "It all depends what the global situation will be, what market rates there'll be, and we'll be deciding accordingly. But technically we should be ready to enter the market at very little notice," Yermolovich said.
The 2020 budget targets $1.35 billion in international bond offerings. The equivalent of $150 million should be placed on the Russian financial market. "Our working draft [for the amount of Eurobonds] is around $1 billion," he said.
Yermolovich said in November last year that he expected the cost of new Eurobonds to be placed in 2020 to come down.
Prime Minister Sergei Rumas said on November 22 that Belarus would place more than $1 billion of Eurobonds on the London Stock Exchange in Q1 2020. The Finance Ministry said half of that issue might be placed in the form of a euro-denominated tranche.