Vietnam: once, twice, three times a bond issuer

The Socialist Republic of Vietnam returned to the international bond markets for the third time in its history on Thursday with a $1 billion 10-year issue accompanied by a switch and tender offering.

Under the lead management of Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Standard Chartered, the B1BB-BB- rated sovereign priced its new benchmark bond at par on a semi-annual coupon of 4.8% to yield about 243bp over Treasuries. This represented 32.5bp through initial guidance around the 5.125% level, which was tightened to 5bp either side of 4.85% after the leads had built up an order book of $7.5 billion.

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