Tuesday November 3, 12:08 PM
Commercial Bank of Qatar seeks US buyers for bond
DUBAI, Nov 3 (Reuters) - Commercial Bank of Qatar, the Gulf state's third-biggest by market value, will gauge U.S. investor's appetite for a potential bond issue at a roadshow on Wednesday.
'We are going on a roadshow, starting tomorrow in the U.S. followed by Asia, Dubai and Abu Dhabi on Sunday,' Finance Director Nicholas Coleman said on Tuesday from Doha.
Gulf issuance of conventional as well as Islamic bonds this year has remained well below 2008 levels, but a growing appetite for emerging market debt has encouraged more bond issuance this quarter.
Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS - news) and Credit Suisse are organising the roadshow, according to Thomson IFR.
Coleman declined to comment on how much the bank, part-owned by the country's sovereign wealth fund, is looking to issue or why it was going to the markets. He indicated any bond was more likely to be a conventional one rather than an Islamic bond, or sukuk.
Investors have shown strong appetite for recent Qatar government entity bond sales. In July, a joint venture between Qatar Petroleum and Exxon Mobil Corp (NYSE: XOM - news) sold about $2.3 billion in bonds to finance the expansion of LNG facilities. A month earlier, state-controlled Qatar Telecommunications Co's debut $1.5 billion bond was heavily oversubscribed.
Qatar's economy is expected to grow in real terms by 7 to 9 percent in 2009.
Commercial Bank of Qatar, which is rated A- by Standard & Poor's and A by Fitch ratings, last came to the market in 2006 with a $500 million bond as part of a $1.5 billion Euro medium term note programme.
(Reporting by Rachna Uppal; Editing by Erica Billingham) Keywords: COMMERCIALBANK/
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