Qatari telco Qtel has mandated six banks for a new US dollar bond offering, with marketing planned to start next week.
Barclays, HSBC, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities, Mizuho Securities, Morgan Stanley and QNB Capital will act as joint lead managers and…
Qatari telco Qtel has mandated six banks for a new US dollar bond offering, with marketing planned to start next week.
Barclays, HSBC, Mitsubishi UFJ Securities, Mizuho Securities, Morgan Stanley and QNB Capital will act as joint lead managers and bookrunners for the proposed benchmark bond, according to an announcement by Qtel today.
The bond will be issued by Qtel International Finance, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Qtel, and will be guaranteed by the parent company. The exact size of the bond has not been revealed yet.
Investor roadshows will commence 9 December, covering the US, Europe, Middle East and Asia. A spokesperson from Qtel told TelecomFinance that further information relating to the bond would be released on commencement of the roadshows.
Moody’s assigned a (P) A2 rating to the new notes today, which are Qtel’s second global medium term notes (GMTN) programme. “The notes rating is in line with Qtel’s issuer ratings as Qtel will unconditionally and irrevocably guarantee the notes and the notes will rank pari passu with all other unsecured and unsubordinated debt of Qtel,” said the rating agency in a statement.
“[The note programme] has been registered in the Republic of Ireland and complements a [previous] US$5bn GMTN programme (rated (P)A2) that has been registered in the United Kingdom and which Qtel has utilised with the issuance of notes at a par value of US$4.25bn.”
TelecomFinance reported last month that Qtel had formally expressed an interest in acquiring Vivendi’s stake in Maroc Telecom.
An analyst with close knowledge of the company told TelecomFinance at the time that he expected Qtel to issue more bonds if they needed to finance the Maroc Telecom deal, which he predicted would cost between US$7-8bn. “Historically their bond issues have a very good response,” he said.
