Turkey & Hungary File To Sell Billions in Dollar Bonds

It is not every day that you see foreign nations register bond offerings with the SEC for sale in the United States.  This morning we saw two S-B filings come literally about 58 seconds of each other.  Turkey filed to sell $10  billion in dollar-denominated debt and Hungary filed to sell $5 billion in dollar-denominated debt.  This comes on the heels of a $5 billion dollar-denominated debt filing from South Korea just last week.

The Republic of Turkey filed to sell $10,000,000,000 in debt securities of which $1,669,755,850 aggregate principal amount of debt securities has been previously registered.  Turkey will use the net proceeds from the sale of the debt securities for the general financing purposes of Turkey, which may include the repayment of debt.

The Republic of Hungary filed to sell $5,000,000,000 in debt securities of which $500,000,000 aggregate principal amount of debt securities has been previously registered.  The country noted that net proceeds from each sale of debt securities will be used for general financing purposes, and it may also issue securities in exchange for any of its outstanding securities.

Just last week came a filing for an offering of up to $5,000,000,000 from the Republic of Korea’s Korea Finance Corporation.  The filing was for debt securities and warrants for debt securities.  That was the replacement for the Korea Development Bank.

Based upon the problems we have all seen from the European Union, it will be worth watching to see if other nations follow suit.  When you see two nations file that close to each other back to back, it is pretty hard to not wonder if other emerging market and developing market nations are not soon to file as well.

JON C. OGG