Eurobond Market Gets Issues in Yen, Canadian Dollars --- Special to The Wall Street Journal
LONDON -- Norway offered the first major yen issue since January to strong demand Thursday, and a 300 million Canadian dollar ($241.4 million) issue for BCE Inc. marked the largest launch in that sector.</br></br>No new bonds were launched in U.S. dollars, and seasoned Eurodollar issues closed mostly unchanged as the U.S. Treasury market continued to drift on dollar weakness and inflation concerns.</br></br>Norway's 50 billion yen ($394.3 million), seven-year issue, priced to yield 5.12% by lead manager Daiwa Europe Ltd., was well-received.</br></br>Syndicate specialists said the bonds were correctly priced, and co-managers said they had plenty of clients in Europe interested in the issue because of the borrower and the lack of supply in this sector.</br></br>But they were critical of the way the issue was handled by the lead manager, charging that Daiwa had widely pre-placed the paper in Europe Wednesday and then overnight in Tokyo. They noted that a preplacement period is usually a few hours before the official launch, not a full day.