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Netherlands (12) -- News -- 2011
Rabobank Nederland to Sell Hybrid Contingent Notes
18.01.2011
Rabobank Nederland, Europe’s biggest agricultural lender, is selling undated subordinated bonds that can be
written down if its regulatory capital requirements fall below a preset threshold.
The perpetual Tier 1 notes in dollars, which can be repaid after 5 1/2 years, lose money if Rabobank’s
consolidated equity capital ratio falls below 8 percent, according to Rogier Everwijn, the Utrecht, Holland-based
lender’s head of long-term funding. The company last year issued 1.25 billion euros ($1.66 billion) of 6.875 percent
senior notes due 2020 that can be written down by 75 percent and repaid immediately in a crisis.
Rabobank is selling debt securities that have tax advantages over equity, as well as loss-absorbing features that
allow the issuer to treat them as capital. Regulators are pushing banks to issue this type of debt after existing
so-called hybrid bonds failed to absorb losses during the 2008 financial crisis.
The bank, which has the top credit ratings from Moody’s Investors Service and Standard & Poor’s, had a Tier 1 ratio of 13.5 percent as of June last year and would have to lose 12.3 billion euros to trigger the writedown, according to Everwijn. The securities are written down rather than converting to equity because Rabobank doesn’t have publicly traded stock, he said.
Netherlands (12) -- Analyses -- 2011
TenneT May Partner With Investors on Offshore Wind Power Cables
19.01.2011
TenneT Holding BV, the Dutch power grid operator that bought German electricity lines fromE.ON AG last year,
may seek investors to partner with on cables to connect offshore wind farms to mainland Germany.
“If this massive speed of investment continues, then there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be looking for a co-ownership
of certain projects,” Mel Kroon, the company’s chief executive officer, said today in an interview in Berlin.
TenneT is “in discussions with several parties to discover if the rate return on risk is adequate to have a tap
to the financial markets, both for capital and for debt.”
Dutch state-owned TenneT will invest about 5 billion euros ($6.7 billion) in Germany in the 10 years through 2020
and 4 billion euros in the Netherlands. “The main drain of money is only happening in the last two years because
then you’re actually building and buying stuff,” he said.
“We’d like to have a continuous line of new bonds in parallel to our extension program,” Kroon said. TenneT, based in Arnhem, Netherlands, may sell about 1 billion euros of bonds in the first half of the year, he said, adding that the company would prefer 10-year notes.
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Bulgarian