Loan record – Newspaper Kommersant No. 214 (7415) dated 11/18/2022

Against the backdrop of active attraction of funds to the budget from the Ministry of Finance, Sberbank spoke brightly. He subscribed for two issues of two-year bonds for 120 billion rubles. This year it is a record placement of corporate bonds. After the record placements of the Ministry of Finance and Sberbank, one can expect activation of corporate borrowers and banks, analysts say.

After the successful placement of the Ministry of Finance, corporate borrowers stepped up attraction in the debt market. On Thursday, November 17, Sberbank closed the order book for the placement of two issues of two-year bonds with a total volume of 120 billion rubles. For both issues, the coupon rate was set at 9% per annum, which corresponds to a yield to maturity of about 9.2% per annum.

This was a record attraction by a corporate issuer this year.

Moreover, for Sberbank, an issue of 100 billion rubles. became the largest circulating in the market.

Viktor Tunev, Chief Analyst of Ingosstrakh-Investments Management Company, notes that the largest issue of Sberbank’s classic bonds to date has been 41 billion rubles. The results of the technical placement on the stock exchange, which will take place on November 18, will show how marketable the issues were. “In the history of Sberbank, there were both very popular issues among investors with thousands of participants, and not quite market issues with several participants,” Mr. Tunev notes.

The last time the largest Russian bank issued classic fixed-coupon bonds was exactly a year ago, in November 2021. This year, large banks mainly placed investment and structured bonds targeted at wealthy investors. In October alone, almost three dozen issues of such bonds worth 5.5 billion rubles were placed. The yield of such securities usually depends on the value of the underlying assets and certain events, while on classic bonds the yield is fixed for the entire period. “Banks had enough liquidity, and liabilities were cheaper than bonds,” explains Aleksey Tretyakov, general director of Arikapital Management Company.

The large-scale issue of classic bonds, according to market participants, was a response to the OFZ placement on Wednesday (see “Kommersant” dated November 16). As a result, the ministry fulfilled the plan not only until the end of the year, but for the first months of 2023, which had a positive impact on the secondary debt market. On Wednesday alone, OFZ fixed income (OFZ-PD) yields dropped 15-25 bp. “Many people on the market postponed purchases until the OFZ market stabilized, and after the situation on the market improved, demand immediately went into high-quality bonds,” says Sergey Zharov, regional director of Zenit Private Banking.

Although Sberbank offered a standard OFZ premium of 100 bp. the issue could be of interest to all market participants, especially large private investors.

“Many people could have received dividends from Gazprom and are now evaluating where to invest large sums,” notes Mr. Tunev. “Investors could have been attracted by a fairly short maturity, only two years, and the high credit quality of the issuer,” notes Mr. Tretyakov. “Given the quality of the issuer, the urgency of the issue and the proposed coupon, the papers are of interest even to the treasuries of large corporations, which could have accumulated free liquidity,” notes a source on the market.

The placement of Sberbank is a good benchmark for both banks and corporate borrowers to go out with large placements, Sergey Zharov believes. On Thursday, Interfax reported that on November 21, Gazprombank will collect applications from investors for the issue of at least 20 billion rubles. “As the market stabilizes, banks can take advantage of good market conditions to attract medium-term liabilities in order to equalize balance sheets in anticipation of the end of the financial year,” notes Mr. Zharov.

Vitaly Gaidaev