Dutch issuers strive to satisfy investors

摘要

With the current low level of issuance from corporates, it is financial institutions that have made the majority of recent offerings out of The Netherlands. These issuances have met with a strong reception from investors in the US and Asia, as well as the rest of Europe. The appetite in the US was illustrated in November last year, when Rabobank sold $1.75bn worth of Trust Preferred Securities, helping raise its Tier 1 capital adequacy ratio to a healthy 10.8%. The rarity of a Triple A rated bank coming to the market helped the issue come in 2.5 times oversubscribed. "We have issued Tier 1 capital in the Dutch market in recent years, and from a diversification point of view we were looking to other regions in the world, and based upon research done by ourselves and lead manager Merrill Lynch we came to the conclusion that the US market was the best market at that moment," explains Bert Bruggink, head of Group Treasury at Rabobank Group.