| Frank Sixt |
Why did you decide to try to issue when you did?
I didn't do it in the first half because I had a view on interest rates that suggested they wouldn't be rising as quickly as people thought. And we were busy on other things. We were completing the financing for Italy, we were involved in the Global Crossing transaction, and were working through the details of our retail acquisition. So it seemed perfectly logical to look at a September issue - not an unconventional time to look at markets. But we hit an unconventional series of market events.
Was it a shock not to get the issue away?
The shock was that nobody could get anything away. Take a look at those couple of weeks. There wasn't a euro-denominated corporate or sterling-denominated corporate issue. The market just shut down. But because we are a large Asian corporate, its much more exciting if you write Hutch wasn't able to raise money. The real headline should have been that there was no market where money was being raised.