Slovenia issues first ever 30-year bond in international markets

Slovenia has issued 300 million euros in 30-year bonds with a coupon rate of 3.125 percent in what its Finance Ministry said is the longest maturity bond ever issued by the country in international debt markets.

This is the third bond issue this year after the country issued in March one billion euros in 20-year bonds with a coupon rate of 1.55 percent, followed by a 10-year bond last week, according to Slovenian Press Agency (STA) today.

"After the successful issue of a ten-year reference bond in July, Slovenia took the advantage of improved market conditions," the STA report quoted a release from the ministry as saying.

"The successful 30-year transaction reflects the investors' trust in Slovenia, despite the recent market volatility and geopolitical risk faced by the eurozone," the Ministry's press release stressed.

The latest bond is meant to continue pre-financing of budgetary needs for 2016.

The price of the latest bond with the maturity date on 7 August 2045 was determined on Thursday at 160 basis points above the mean interest rate swap, at a spread of 177.3 basis points above the reference German bond.

The lead manager was Goldman Sachs International. Most of the investors (60.5 percent) were fund managers, followed by banks (27.5 percent), insurance companies and pension funds (11.3 percent) and venture capital funds (0.7 percent).

The bulk are from Germany (68.8 percent) with the remaining coming from the UK (29.2 percent), Slovenia (1.7 percent) and Austria (0.3 percent).