Australia’s Westpac breaks bond hiatus

First issue: Australia’s big banks, including Westpac, are bursting with cash and had abandoned onshore and offshore senior markets since the RBA introduced the term funding facility in March 2020. — AFP

SYDNEY: Westpac Banking Group has reopened Australia’s big banks bond-market taps for the first time in more than a year, with a US$2.75bil (RM11.4bil) deal that also marked their first use of a non-US dollar London Interbank Offered Rate (Libor) benchmark rate to price the debt.

Investors gobbled up Westpac’s first issue of senior bonds since January last year, allowing the country’s second-largest lender to pay only 60 basis points over Treasuries for US$1bil (RM4.14bil) in 10-year debt, a 25% discount to the 80 points it paid last year.