Nigeria’s Diamond Bank expects to launch a $550m bond next month and hopes for a 10-year maturity, its chief finance officer said on Thursday, noting that its roadshow ended without a deal yet.
The mid-tier lender ended a two-week investor road-show to Britain, Switzerland and the United States last week, which was meant to update fund managers on the bank and gauge appetite for the issue, CFO Abdulrahman Yinusa said.
“The issue as well as the pricing will happen sometime in July. We have only done the road-show,” Yinusa told Reuters, adding that the bank wanted to raise a maximum of $550m.
Several emerging market borrowers, including Nigeria, have held road-shows in recent weeks, but the US Federal Reserve’s talk of winding down its money-pumping programme has kept new issues to a minimum.
Yinusa said the bank had met Goldman Sachs and Fidelity fund managers, among other investors during the road-show.
The road-show was arranged by lead managers for the bond, France’s BNP Paribas and Afrexim Bank.
A banking source said two weeks ago that Diamond Bank wanted to issue the bond at a yield of 6-8 percent, mirroring the seven per cent yield that rival lender Fidelity Bank fetched on its $300m Eurobond issue in May.
Depending on the pricing and tenor, Diamond could settle for an amount between $300m and $550m, Yinusa said, noting that it would issue a minimum maturity of seven years in order for the bond to qualify as Tier II capital on its books.
In a presentation prepared for the bond seen by Reuters, it said the proposed 10-year bond will be callable after 5 years and will be listed on the Irish Stock Exchange.
Diamond Bank, with a B credit rating and stable outlook from Fitch, has said it intended to use the bond proceeds to fund lending to the oil and gas, power and infrastructure sectors in Africa’s second biggest economy.
Meanwhile, the bank has assured its customers of quality financial services delivery in an efficient, seamless and cost-effective manner that would add value to their undertakings.
A statement from the Diamond Bank quoted its Executive Director, Lagos Business, Mr. Uzoma Dozie, as noting the increase in the bank’s product offerings and its aggressive expansion scheme were practical testimony of the bank’s appreciation of the need to provide superb financial services to its customers.
He spoke at the bank’s customers’ forum in Lagos.
He noted that the bank brought all its relevant departments to the forum for the teeming customers to get first hand information about the activities of the bank and to share their experience with them.
He added that the objective of the forum was for the customers to see the bank as a partner in progress in an effort to achieving its vision of becoming a leading financial institution with the best people, providing unequalled customer experience and delivering superior shareholders value.
He said, “We still have a long way to go; I don’t believe we are already where we want to be. One of our focuses is to ensure that any service you can get in any bank in the world, you can actually get it in the Diamond Bank.
“Our initiative is to help our customers to reduce the number of banks they are maintaining. In future, you are going to see more innovation in the bank, I also believe that part of our role is to provide non-financial services to our customers.”
He called on the customers to feel free to point out where the bank was right or wrong in its operations as every feedback either positive or negative would help it to improve and deliver value as well as increase return on investments.