Ukrainian Eurobonds have been like London buses of late: you wait ages for one to arrive and then a whole fleet appears at once. With investor sentiment towards the country on the rise following the electoral victories of president Victor Yanukovich in recent months – which seem to have put an end to the years of political impasse that plagued his predecessor Viktor Yushchenko – a range of different issuers have sought to exploit the more upbeat attitude towards the country to source offshore funding.
Among those to tap the Eurobond markets is coal miner and power company Donbass Fuel and Energy Company (Dtek), which recently ended a three-year wait to access the international fixed-income markets for the first time. The company is part of the System Capital Management group, owned by Ukraine’s richest oligarch, Rinat Akhmetov, that also includes businesses in the metals, financial and telecommunication sectors. It had originally hoped to tap the Euromarkets in 2007, but those plans fell victim to the onset of the global credit crunch that choked off liquidity to emerging market borrowers and the subsequent deep recession in Ukraine.
Strong demand
Dtek printed a $500 million, 9.5%