CAF Breaks Japanese Retail Ice

CAF has raised $74m from what it calls the first ever retail-only placement in the Japanese market by a LatAm issuer. The 2014 bond sold in the so-called Uridashi market priced at 99.98 with a 3.11% coupon to yield 3.12%. Officials at the issuer and lead bank note that there have been mixed institutional-retail offers in Japan by Latin issuers, but this is the first purely retail. The latter is a more difficult market typically dominated by AAA Japanese credits. CAF is rated A1/A+. Daiwa Securities managed the sale. CAF has been issuing in Japan for more than a decade, most recently in February 2009 with a JPY10bn ($108m) 3.4% of 2019 private placement.