BEST JAPANESE BORROWER
NTT
It has taken a long time for the Japanese market to recover; investor sentiment has been painfully low. But a handful of the top-rated borrowers have bravely tapped the Euromarket and led the start of a revival. Nippon Telegraph and Telephone Corporation (NTT) was the third purely Japanese borrower to issue a non-yen denominated deal (after Jexim and the Japanese Financial Corporation for Municipal Corporates) since Jexim had issued last July, and was the first Japanese company to come back to the Euromarkets in over a year.
On March 2 it launched a $500 million five-year deal, lead-managed by Merrill Lynch and Warburg Dillon Read. It was launched at 75 basis points over treasuries and has since tightened to between 15bp and 20bp over. The company's excellent name has helped make the deal a success. "They are the best-rated company in Japan. It is a very prestigious name," says Tomonori Ito, managing director and co-head of corporate finance at Warburg Dillon Read in Tokyo.
At the end of April NTT launched a e750 million ($786 million) seven-year deal, lead managed by Deutsche and Paribas. It tapped into a different investor base, including France, Germany and Italy, instead of its typical Swiss and Benelux buyers.