Macedonia has priced its first international bond sale in five years – a seven-year €500m (£396m) offering – at a yield of just 4.25 per cent, underscoring the appetite for exotic bonds from “frontier” markets, FastFT reports.
The Ivory coast sold a well-received $750m 10-year bond yesterday, and Senegal is expected next week, as a slew of lowly-rated countries take advantage of the cheap funding costs offered by buoyant bond markets.
For comparison, the average 10-year borrowing costs of the US over the past two decades is 4.4 per cent, 4.1 per cent for Germany and 4.8 per cent for the UK. Macedonia is rated BB- by Standard & Poor’s and BB+ by Fitch – in the “junk” range of ratings.
