A $100 million wrapped deal originated by Brazil's Unibanco priced at 45 basis points over three-month Libor, according to well-placed sources. Nomura Securities and Barclays Capital jointly led the transaction, which is backed by diversified payment rights and has a legal final maturity of seven years and an average life of 5.03 years.
Standard & Poor's and Fitch Ratings have released ratings of triple-A, thanks to the surety, courtesy of MBIA.
In early July, the bank redeemed $112 million outstanding of a $120 million DPR issue closed in June 2003 via Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein. A floater, that transaction priced at 425 basis points over 3 month Libor and came unwrapped. Moody's Investors Service, S&P and Fitch rated it Baa1'/'BBB-'/'BBB', respectively. It was timed to mature in 2009. Talk is that the all-in cost of the upcoming wrapped transaction might have proved cheaper than the naked DPR transaction last year.
Apart from the retired deal, Unibanco has issued approximately $933 million off a DPR program. That includes a 25 billion bond, issued via Nomura in late 2003, which marked the first time a DPR deal was placed in a currency other than the greenback-denominated collateral.
NCB terms out, upsizes old deal
Elsewhere in the cross-border market, National Commerical Bank Jamaica (NCB) upsized and termed out a credit-card backed deal issued in 2001. The deal was raised to $200 million from $125 million initially and the final maturity was extended to Oct. 7, 2009 from July 2006. Prompted by the changes, S&P affirmed its AAA' rating on the deal, which is wrapped by XLCA.
As of press time, Moody's had yet to issue a release. It originally gave the deal a shadow rating of Baa3', as the agency didn't have a rating on XL at that time. Since then, Moody's has rated XL wraps at triple-A.
Led by Citigroup Global Markets, the NCB transaction is reportedly in one of the bank's conduits. Upsizing and pushing out an existing conduit transaction as opposed to issuing anew is generally more cost effective for an issuer, sources said.
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