Bahrain To Issue $1.25bn Bond

Bahrain, troubled by ongoing social unrest, is planning to issue a $1.25 billion bond in the second or third week of June, a central bank official said on Wednesday.

The conventional bond will have a tenor of between seven and 10 years, which may appeal to institutional international investors who tend to favour longer-dated paper, the official said, speaking on condition of anonymity.

“We finished almost everything but we are still finalising,” the official said on the sidelines of an Arab Monetary Fund conference in the UAE capital.

“It (bond issue) will maybe in the second or third week of June..”

Standard Chartered, JP Morgan, Gulf International Bank and Citigroup Inc are mandated to arrange the deal, the government official confirmed.

Sources told Reuters earlier this month that the Gulf state, hit by protests in the last year, had picked banks for the issue, likely to fall under a regulatory framework allowing investment by U. S. institutions.

Bahrain’s last bond issue was a $750 million seven-year Islamic bond, or Sukuk, which was priced to yield 6.273 per cent.