Singapore's largest bank United Overseas Bank, gave credit investors a welcome sheaf of new paper this week with the issuance of $1 billion in 10 year subordinated notes. Priced at 117bps over treasuries the bonds were snapped up in little over 14 hours of marketing with a book that was 10 times oversubscribed.
Behind these bonds was some clear rarity value no Singapore issuer had been to the market since SingTel's $2.29 billion blockbuster back in November 2001. And UOB had not been in the market since earlier that same year.
Yet investors had an interesting credit story to understand as well. Fundamentally Singaporean banks have too much capital already....
