DUBLIN (Reuters) – Ireland’s debt agency has cancelled a regular bond auction planned for Thursday and will instead sell new 10-year debt through a syndicate of banks, a method that typically raises a far larger amount of funds.
Ireland’s National Treasury Management Agency (NTMA) in April revised its funding target for 2020 to 20-24 billion euros ($23-$27 billion) from the 10-14 billion euros envisaged at the start of the year in order to fund extra government spending to cope with the coronavirus crisis.
It has raised 12.5 billion euros so far, 10 billion of which was via syndication.
The NTMA has mandated Barclays, BNP Paribas, Danske Bank, Davy, NatWest Markets and Nomura to launch the new 10-year bond sale “in the near future”, a statement provided by one of the joint lead managers said.
The NTMA regularly uses such language when kicking off a syndicated sale the next day.
(Reporting by Padraic Halpin in Dublin and Yoruk Bahceli in London; Editing by Mark Potter)
