European Commission issues €8 billion in its 1st syndicated transaction of 2024

January 24, 2024 by European Union Leave a Comment

This article is brought to you in association with the European Commission.

The European Commission, which issues EU-Bonds on behalf of the EU, has today raised a further €8 billion of EU-Bonds in its 1^st syndicated transaction for 2024. The dual tranche transaction raised €3 billion through a 7-year bond due on 4 December 2030 and €5 billion via a 30-year bond due on 4 March 2053.

Investor demand for the transaction was exceptional, with bids totalling €81 billion on the 7-year bond and €99 billion on the 30-year bond. This equals oversubscription rates of approximately 27 times and 20 times, respectively.

In 2024, the Commission is continuing to execute its funding operations using its unified funding approach. Under this approach, funding for different borrowing programmes is financed through the issuance of single branded “EU-Bonds” rather than separately labelled bonds for individual programmes.

The Commission has now issued approximately €13 billion of its €75 billion funding target for the first half of 2024. A full overview of all EU transactions executed to date is available online. A detailed overview of the EU’s planned transactions for the first half of 2024 is also available in the EU funding plan.

Background

The European Commission borrows on international capital markets on behalf of the European Union and disburses the funds to Member States and third countries under various borrowing programmes. EU borrowing is guaranteed by the EU budget, and contributions to the EU budget are an unconditional legal obligation of all Member States under the EU Treaties.

On the basis of EU-Bonds raised since the launch of the NextGenerationEU programme in mid-2021, the Commission has so far disbursed €219.12 billion in grants and loans to the EU Member States under the Recovery and Resilience Facility, on top of further support to other EU programmes benefitting from NextGenerationEU funding.

In 2023, EU-Bonds were also used to finance €18 billion in loans to Ukraine under the Macro-Financial Assistance + (MFA+) programme. This programme followed the disbursement of €7.2 billion by the Commission in emergency MFA loans to Ukraine in 2022. Prior to that, the EU had provided over €5 billion to Ukraine through five MFA programmes since 2014.

To support the secondary market liquidity of EU-Bonds, the Commission has introduced a framework incentivizing EU Primary Dealers to provide pricing quotes for EU securities on electronic platforms (in place since November 2023). In addition, the Commission is working on a facility to support the use of EU-Bonds as an instrument for repurchase agreements (to be implemented by mid-2024).

Today’s bond syndication7-year tapDue on 4 December 2030, this bond carries a coupon of 3.125% and came at a re-offer yield of 2.781%, equivalent to a price of 102.112. The spread to mid-swap is +11 bps, which is equivalent to +53.6 bps over the Bund due on 15 November 2030 and + 16.4 bps over the OAT due on 25 November 2030.The final order book was of over €81 billion.30-year tapDue on 4 March 2053, this bond carries a coupon of 3.000% and came at a re-offer yield of 3.368% equivalent to a price of 93.235. The spread to mid-swap is +85 bps, which is equivalent to +85 bps over the Bund due on 15 August 2053 and +8.9 over the OAT due on 25 May 2053.The final order book was of over €99 billion.The joint lead managers of this transaction were Bank of America, Credit Agricole CIB, Citigroup Global Markets Europe, DZ Bank and NatWest Markets.

Information about the allocation of investors is being made available in the transactions section of the EU as a borrower website.

Quote(s)

Investor demand was exceptional in our first syndicated transaction of the year. The deal attracted €180 billion of orders overall, with the 7-year tranche 27 times oversubscribed and the 30-year tranche almost 20 times oversubscribed. This level of demand signals investors’ ongoing support for the EU funding strategy against a stable and supportive market backdrop.

Johannes Hahn, Commissioner for Budget and Administration

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