Industrial Bank of Korea to sell $500 mn bond at lower cost

Industrial Bank of Korea (IBK) is slated to raise $500 million in dollar corporate bond at a lower-than-planned cost on strong demand.

IBK decided to sell the three-year fixed-rate bond on Sept. 17 at around 0.6% per annum, narrower than its initial guidance of 0.94%, or 0.5 percentage point higher than the three-year US Treasury yield, according to the investment banking sources.

The bank received $1.4 billion worth of orders from 77 institutional investors for the bond during the bookbuilding sessions in Asia, Europe and the United States from Sept. 13.

IBK is set to issue the debt as a sustainable bond, one of environment, social and governance (ESG) bonds with a plant to list it on the Singapore Exchange (SGX).

Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Citigroup Global Markets, HSBC and Standard Chartered underwrote the bond issues.

Moody’s Investors Service, Standard & Poor's (S&P) and Fitch Ratings rated IBK at Aa2, AA- and AA-, respectively.

Write to Hyun-Il Lee at hiuneal@hankyung.com
Jongwoo Cheon edited this article.