Agricultural Development Bank of China (ADBC) marked its first benchmark new issue of 2020 when it successfully priced on August 4 a dual-tranche offering of CNH 2.5 billion 3-year and CNH 1.8 billion 5-year, fixed-rate senior unsecured bonds.

The offering was also the first CNH bond issuance from a Chinese policy bank following the first dim sum bonds offering by the Ministry of Finance of the People’s Republic of China in 2020.

With combined orderbooks of 11.4 billion at its peak and a final oversubscription ratio of 3.82 times, the deal was priced with a reoffer yield of 2.6% for the 3-year tranche and 2.85% for the 5-year, which was 55 basis points (bp) and 51bp tighter than the secondary market yield curve of onshore comparable bonds with similar tenor on the pricing day.

On the back of robust investor demand, ADBC successfully upsized this issuance from the originally planned CNH 3 billion in total to CNH 4.3 billion.

The net proceeds will be used for general corporate purposes, which includes aspects of supporting China’s domestic and international development, strengthening pandemic prevention and control, and stimulating the economic recovery and rural revitalization.

Listing venues include the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, the ChongWa (Macao) Financial Asset Exchange (MOX), the Luxembourg Stock Exchange, the London Stock Exchange, and the China Europe International Exchange.

Bank of China, Standard Chartered Bank, and Bank of Communications are joint global co-ordinators, while Agricultural Bank of China (Hong Kong), ABC International, and China Construction Bank (Asia) are joint bookrunners, along with ICBC (Asia), SPDB International, CLSA, Mizuho Securities, Crédit Agricole Corporate and Investment Bank, CTBC Bank, KGI Asia, and DBS Bank.