Issuer: Junto de Comunidades de Castilla-La Mancha
Size:€ 100 million
Lead managers: Banco Santander Central Hispano and Merrill Lynch
Date: Priced November 21 2003
| Castilla-La Mancha budget ebn |
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| Source: Castilla-La Mancha |
Spain's 17 autonomous communities, the comunidades autónomas, haven't yet tapped the investor base beyond their home jurisdiction as productively as some of their French, German, or Italian regional issuer counterparts. But the central Spanish region of Castilla-La Mancha is showing what can be done. At the end of November it priced a €100 million, 20-year, semi-annual, floating-rate bond, following on from a e100 million 10-year bond that was launched almost exactly a year ago.
After a successful joint pitch for last year's deal, Banco Santander and Merrill Lynch teamed up again and won the mandate to lead manage the 20-year bond.
Last year's bond priced at eight basis points over Euribor, this year's came in at 11bp. That is broadly the same pricing that Castilla-La Mancha was achieving on the public bonds it issued between 1998 and 2001 through Banco de España (the central bank).