Celgene prices $4.5 billion; Senior Housing sells notes; high-grade credit spreads soften

By Cristal Cody

Tupelo, Miss., Feb. 8 – A handful of high-grade issuers tapped the primary market on Thursday as credit spreads widened amid continued volatility in equities.

The Federal Home Loan Bank System came early in the session and priced $3 billion of two-year global notes.

Celgene Corp. priced $4.5 billion of senior notes in four tranches during the session.

Senior Housing Properties Trust sold $500 million of 10-year senior notes.

Also, Municipality Finance plc priced a $250 million tap of its senior floating-rate notes due Feb. 7, 2020 on Thursday.

The Dow Jones industrial average dropped more than 1,000 points, or 4.15%, on the day.

The Markit CDX North American Investment Grade 29 index widened about 6 basis points to close at a spread of 61 bps.

Investment-grade bond spreads have been mostly softer on the volatility in stocks, with spreads in the one- to three-year part of the curve widening 2 bps on Wednesday, on top of a 3 bps to 7 bps widening on Tuesday on heavy selling pressure, according to a BofA Merrill Lynch analysts’ note released on Thursday.

“The $2.3 [billion] jump in dealer inventories of 1-3 year paper over the last two days shows that this spread widening is driven by investor selling,” the analysts said. “We continue to look for wider spreads in the front-end of the curve.”

© 2015 Prospect News.
All content on this website is protected by copyright law in the U.S. and elsewhere. For the use of the person downloading only.
Redistribution and copying are prohibited by law without written permission in advance from Prospect News.
Redistribution or copying includes e-mailing, printing multiple copies or any other form of reproduction.