LTA prints Singapore's largest local bond offering of year

SINGAPORE (REUTERS) - The Land Transport Authority of Singapore (LTA) has increased the size of its offering of dual-tranche Singapore dollar bonds to $1.2 billion, making it the largest issuance year to date in the city state.

The sizes of the tranches of seven and 12 years were raised from an original $500 million to $600 million each, reflecting healthy demand, although no distribution statistics were released. The books on both tranches went subject within a few hours of launch.

Bankers had said on Thursday that interest was keen among insurance companies, fund managers and financial institutions. LTA bonds are used as proxy for the government of Singapore, but provide a bit of pick-up over the Singapore government securities. The seven-year paper was priced on Thursday at a premium of around 20 basis points over the seven-year SGS yield.

The paper will be issued off a $5 billion multicurrency MTN programme on August 31.

DBS was sole lead manager and bookrunner.

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