Maersk 500 mln eur bond issue oversubscribed-source

News was prepared under the information support of Online Daily Newspaper on Hellenic and international Shipping "Hellenic Shipping News".

20 Nov 2010

Danish shipping and oil group A.P. Moller-Maersk sold 500 million euros ($698.5 million) worth of new seven-year bonds in an oversubscribed offering that was part of a policy to diversify its funding. The books closed at 1015 GMT on Friday after the issue was oversubscribed with orders totalling more than 1 billion euros, a market source close to the deal said.
The price was indicated at mid-swaps +175 basis points, Danske Bank, one of the bookrunners, said.
Barclays, BNP Paribas, HSBC, Royal Bank of Scotland and Danske were bookrunners.
The group has no immediate plans to obtain a rating as a debt issuer, Maersk's head of finance Jan Kjaervik told Reuters.
It would seek to build up a portfolio of bonds with various maturities, and it would make sense to have maturities of three, five and seven years, Kjaervik added.
A.P. Moller-Maersk, which owns the world's biggest container shipping company Maersk Line, entered the corporate bond market for the first time last year with a 750 million euro issue followed by a 4 billion Norwegian crown ($689.2 million) issue.
The group has repeatedly said it aims to diversify its sources of funding and bonds would gradually play a larger role in its financing, replacing conventional bank debt.
A.P. Moller-Maersk said in its first-half report last week its net interest-bearing debt fell by $4.4 billion to $13.7 billion in the nine months to end-September.
Shares in A.P. Moller-Maersk traded off 1.4 percent by 1134 GMT, underperforming the Copenhagen bluechip index .OMXC20 which was up 0.2 percent.

Source: Reuters