Chief Executive Rick Pudner said on Monday the lender is
eyeing a five-year, dollar-denominated issue.
"Like everyone, we are looking at the opportunities
in the sukuk arena and we're just reviewing our options," Pudner told
reporters on the sidelines of a company event.
"We are looking at five-year but the size we are not
sure. We will determine that over the next week or two weeks."
Emirates NBD could mandate banks as early as this week,
four banking sources had earlier told Reuters.
The sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said
ENBD has drawn up a shortlist of seven or eight banks from which it will select
the institutions which will manage the sale.
This list includes National Bank of Abu Dhabi, Standard
Chartered, HSBC, Citi, Royal Bank of Scotland and ENBD itself.
"We haven't mandated any banks yet," Pudner
said. "There were quite a few issues recently so we have decided to wait a
little bit and see what the right timing is for going into the
market."
Both conventional and Islamic institutions, as well as
global sovereigns such as Bahrain and Indonesia, have been flocking to the
sukuk market recently, creating an unusually active fourth quarter.
Both Abu Dhabi Commercial Bank and Abu Dhabi Islamic Bank
have printed $500 million five-year sukuk in the last two weeks, pricing at a
spread over midswaps of 275 basis points and 245 basis points respectively.
Sources said there would be strong regional interest in
any print but selling the bank to international investors could be more
tricky.
"First and foremost they would have to give a
clinical assessment of their loan book and sell it to investors. If they pay
up, regional accounts will buy but international accounts will probably pass
regardless of the pricing," said a fixed income fund manager.
"It will be a very good move for the bank to
re-establish access and a price point. I think they will probably do a smaller
deal followed by a big one later on."
Investors will be looking for more information on the
impact that Dubai Bank — which was merged with Emirates NBD in October at the
Dubai ruler's behest — will have on the bank and how it will be integrated into
ENBD.
Emirates NBD has issued around $500 million in
privately-placed paper so far in 2011, with all of it sold to European
investors, a Gulf-based banking source said.
One of the largest, with an issue date of Nov. 3, was a
$163 million two-year bond which priced at 140 basis points over the
three-month London interbank offered rate with a 1.832 percent coupon through
sole bookrunner Commerzbank.
The quarterly putable bond, which means investors can ask
for the cash to be repaid every three months, achieved a good price in the
volatile environment, a separate banker said.
In May, Emirates NBD, which has about $2.18 billion in
debt maturities in 2012, completed a debt swap for two existing notes due to
expire in 2016 for longer-term debt. It has repeatedly said it would not
overpay for issuing new debt, and pricing levels so far this year had been too
expensive.
Emirates NBD shares closed up 1.2 percent on the Dubai
bourse on Monday and are up nearly 20 percent this year.
