Ghana sold sub-Saharan Africa’s longest-ever Eurobond as part of a $3 billion deal that was almost five times oversubscribed.
West Africa’s second-biggest economy issued a $750 million tranche, which amortizes and has an average life of 40 years, at 8.875%, making it the highest-yielding sovereign dollar bond so far this year. Pricing was reduced from the initial talk of 9.4%.
The government also sold $1.25 billion of debt with an average maturity of six years and a yield of 6.375%. A third segment of $1 billion has an average life of 14 years, yielding 8%.
Bids topped $14 billion, a person familiar with the transaction said.
Ghana said in September 2018 that it planned a century bond in dollars. While that didn’t happen, it did issue a $1 billion, 2051 instrument at 8.95% six months later. The yield on that dropped 12 basis points on Tuesday to 8.66%.
The latest offering comes at a time when the premium investors demand to hold riskier assets is rising, in large part due to the coronavirus outbreak. Spreads on emerging-market government dollar bonds have widened to 307 basis points over U.S. Treasuries, from 291 basis points at the start of the year, according to a JPMorgan Chase & Co. index.
Bank of America, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Standard Bank Group Ltd. and Standard Chartered Plc arranged Tuesday’s sale.
This tells us the bonds were structured extremely favorably for investors to promise such high yields without having the economy to even pay the interest, let alone the principal. This is indeed a reverse mortgage that is unable to be ever gotten out of using the overall thinking of the current administration. The annual minimum interest payment on 14 billion at 6% is 840 million. So you over 40 years you pay about $34 billion, then you have to pay the $14 billion for a total of $40 billion for the pleasure of borrowing $14 billion. Of course its oversubscribed.
This tells us the bonds were structured extremely favorably for investors to promise such high yields without having the economy to even pay the interest, let alone the principal. This is indeed a reverse mortgage that is unable to be ever gotten out of using the overall thinking of the current administration. The annual minimum interest payment on 14 billion at 6% is 840 million. So you over 40 years you pay about $34 billion, then you have to pay the $14 billion for a total of $40 billion for the pleasure of borrowing $14 billion. Of course its oversubscribed.
The numbers given above are wrong because they should be based on $3 billion and each tranche calculated separately, but the point remains the same.