Enter the Republic of the Philippines.
The sovereign failed to cover itself in much glory yesterday Thursday after it sprung a $300 million re-opening of its 8.375% March 2009 bond on the market.
The deal got done and lead manager JPMorgan got extremely lucky, being able to clear the deal at 292bp over Treasuries - the level it had agreed to hard underwrite it the previous day. However, no-one in the market had anything positive to say about the whole process and most suggested that if the Republic wants to re-access the international bond markets later in the year, then this was not the way to go about it.
And in an increasingly familiar...