Nordic Investment Bank (NIB) came to market early in December with a well-received $1 billion dollar benchmark. But with relatively small funding needs, it is certainly not about to commit itself to a regular issue of big deals. Not having a regular programme may mean more work for Kari Kukka, head of funding, and his team when a deal does come to market. The last deal seems to have taken a lot of effort, even by the labour-intensive standards of AAA issuers. He says: "Before the deal we were on roadshow for three-and-a-half weeks - a week in North America, and another in Asia. It was fairly exhausting but valuable."
And at the end of January he was due to take off again on a trip taking in Tokyo, London and several US cities.
Kukka explains: "Last year our funding target grew to e3.3 billion, letting us do our benchmark issue, thus combining the existing global flexible strategy with a strategic global issue to further diversify NIB's investor base. This year our needs will be between e3 billion and e3.5 billion but we don't make any promises to come to the market. Any issuance depends on relative cost and existing funding possibilities."