irates Business 24-7, 05 October 2009 The process for the launch of the first tranche of the $1.45 billion (Dh5.32bn) sukuk programme by Abu Dhabi's Tourism Development and Investment Company (TDIC) will begin today with a roadshow in Abu Dhabi, sources said. The size of the issue, which will be arranged by three banks including ADCB and Standard Chartered, will be known only after a series of such roadshows to be held in different markets. TDIC refused to on the issue. Media reports said last week the sukuk programme has received high ratings from international agencies. Fitch and Standard & poor's assigned an AA rating to the programme, and Moody's assigned Aa2. TDIC 's $3bn global medium term note programme set up this year was also assigned a AA rating by the same agencies. TDIC , as part of this global bond programme, had raised $1bn in July. The issue attracted substantial interest from global investors, pinging a total order book exceeding $6bn from about 300 investors. The final allocation of TDIC 's $1bn five-year issue was priced at 390 basis points over US Treasuries, a company's release had said in July. Analysts said Islamic institutions are sitting on "comfortable liquidity" compared with their conventional counterparts and hence sukuk could hope to get a better pricing than other bonds. In September, Jeddah-based Islamic Development Bank raised $850 million sukuk under its $1.5bn MTN programme. The issue was oversubscribed more and the five-year sukuk was priced at par with a 3.172 per cent semi-annual profit rate and a yield of 40 basis points over five-year mid-swaps and 77 bps over five-year benchmark US Treasuries respectively. By CL Jose © Emirates Business 24/7 2009 omar 1.1:zy
|
