Kexim snares US demand as Asian investors run out of gas

Export-Import Bank of Korea Kexim has tapped the dollar bond market with a $1 billion three-year bond.

This is an unusual tenor for Asian borrowers, but one that enabled the policy bank to capture strong demand from US investors, just as the Asian bid was running out of gas. The quasi-sovereign typically taps the market with longer tenors but it saw an opportunity to price a deal at pre-crisis levels.

“We tapped the three-year tenor because we wanted to pierce through the psychological 100bp over Treasuries spread and saw good interest from US investors for three-year bonds from high-grade peer group issuers in the US, Canada...