FEC appoints five transaction advisors for $1 billion Euro bond

The Federal Executive Council (FEC) has approved five transaction advisors for the planned floating of a $1billion Eurobond.Briefing state house correspondents yesterday after its meeting in the Presidential Villa, presided over by President Muhammadu Buhari, Minister of Finance, Kemi Adeosun said that the planned bond was already getting “significant interests” from investors just as issuance commences in January 2017.


Adeosun, joined at the briefing by Minister of Environment, Amina Mohammed and that of Information, Lai Mohammed, disclosed that the advisors Nigeria approved are: Citi Group, Standard Chartered, Stanbic IBTC, White & Case, Banwo and Ighodalo, Africa Practices Communication as community advisers.

According to her, the Federal Government hopes to get competitive pricing.The minister said ‎the appointed advisors are expected to run issuance programmes for the next three years to avoid the cumbersome process of re-tendering and selection.

She explained that the $1 billion Eurobond was part of the funding for capital projects in the 2016 budget, which runs till March 2017.“My memo, which was approved by council was for the appointment of transaction parties for the $1 billion Eurobond issue.“The $1 billion Eurobond programme is part of the funding for 2016 budget and we hope to be able to commence the process in January.

“We are confident that we will be able to complete the transaction expediently with significant interest. The oil price stability obviously is helping us. There is currently quite a bit of demand for emerging markets papers. Nigeria’s paper is currently trading around seven to eight per cent mark,” the minister said.
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Further, Adeosun explained that the five parties that have been appointed “would run any Eurobond issuance programme that we do for the next three years, so that we don’t have to keep on re-tendering. Unless there is a major problem with any of them they will be our parties for the next three years.”
“The process that produced the five parties was competitive after which certificate of no objection was obtained from the Bureau for Public Procurement (BPP) for their appointment,” she explained.


(Guardian)