What looked like a disappointing capital management exercise on Wednesday when Country Garden announced that less than 20% of its outstanding convertible bond had been tendered by the holders, turned into triumph last night as the company managed to sell $550 million of new high-yield bonds.
The main purpose of the seven-year bond was to fund the CB tender, which, as it turned out, could have been achieved with a much smaller issue size. However, given the favourable market conditions for new issuance and the strong investor appetite for quality names, the Chinese real estate developer chose to go for a benchmark-size issue even though the CB tender attracted only $114 million worth of bonds,...