Hutchison Whampoa created the largest dollar bond in Asian history yesterday Tuesday on the completion of a second tap of its February 2013 bond. The $1 billion re-opening now brings the overall deal size up to $3.5 billion, easily surpassing the Republic of Korea's $3 billion issue due 2008.
Led by HSBC, the re-opening was pre-marketed at 230bp to 232bp over Treasuries and priced early New York afternoon at 104.115% to yield 5.936% or 230bp over Treasuries. At this level, the new deal came within the bidoffer spread of the old one - trading at 231bp228bp at the time of pricing.
This pushes pricing even tighter than the...