(June 30): Mizuho Financial Group Inc and Sumitomo Mitsui Financial Group Inc have propelled foreign-currency bond sales by Japanese companies to a record for any quarter as the nation’s companies tap deeper overseas markets to finance growth.
The two Japanese lenders priced almost US$10 billion of debt in the US currency in total at the start of the week, pushing quarterly foreign bond issuance by Japanese companies to about US$54 billion so far in the three months ending June 30, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. That is an increase of more than 80% over the year-earlier period and the first time foreign bond sales by Japanese companies have exceeded US$50 billion in any quarter, data stretching back to 1999 show.
The quarterly total is poised to climb after Panasonic Holdings Corp kicked off a dollar note offering and Honda Motor Co debuted a three-part deal in the euro bond market on Tuesday.
The surge in issuance from Japan in overseas currencies is in part being fuelled by the depreciating yen, which slid to its weakest level against the dollar since 1986 this week, as issuers can lock in larger sums by swapping the money back into the Japanese currency. The step-up in foreign-currency issuance from Japan is also part of a multi-year trend, driven by climbing local interest rates that have reduced the benefits of raising debt at home, particularly as the nation’s firms boost overseas acquisitions.
“It’s hard to issue long-dated paper in the yen market” as investor demand is lacklustre amid expectations for further interest rate hikes by the Bank of Japan, said Zerlina Zeng, head of Asia strategy at CreditSights Singapore. Many Japanese corporates have large capital expenditure funding needs and can obtain comparable, or sometimes cheaper, borrowing costs by swapping dollar-bond proceeds back to yen than by issuing local debt in the market, she added.
The previous quarterly record was in the third quarter of last year at just under US$50 billion, Bloomberg-compiled data show. The figures exclude issuance by Japanese government-owned entities and municipalities that have sold at least another US$7 billion in foreign debt markets during the latest quarter, the data show.
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